Beast

The base for Fortis training was small, as they only accepted about twenty new agents per trial, and Sophie quickly memorized the layout of the campus. It was a mere few acres square, five at the most. On the east side was the main street, where the train station, post office, Laundromat, and grocery store were. Across, on the west side, were the Fortis offices. This was where the research lab, as well as classrooms, and lodgings for the three captains were. Near the north border were the apartment buildings where the trainees stayed, complete with a pool and library that they used during their free time (although there was very little of that). The training course was on the southern border.

Sophie was jogging up the stairs to her apartment, sifting through the mail she'd just collected from her box on the ground floor. There was a magazine, a piece of spam mail, and a letter from her father and her brother each. They'd taken to writing to each other because the phone lines at the training grounds were almost always busy, and making calls was expensive. Besides, Sophie was sick of getting Julius's voicemail and playing a game of phone tag with him. Plus, their father, though he was an intelligent man, was clueless when it came to technology, so email and video chatting were completely out of the question.

The door to their apartment was open, as it usually was when someone was home, so Sophie walked right in, tossed the piece of junk mail in the trash, laid the magazine on the kitchen counter, then sat on the couch to read her letters.

She shared an apartment with Etienne and Brandy Lohman, who both handled their time away from loved ones in different ways. Etienne video chatted with her husband and parents daily, filling them in on every little detail of her day that she could and reminding them of how much she loved and missed them.

Brandy didn't have a family, or so she had told them, and didn't seem to have, or at least didn't talk about, close friends. Occasionally, she exchanged emails with someone from work, but seemed unbothered by the time away from home.

Sophie decided to read her father's letter first. She slit the envelope open and took out the two clumsily folded pieces of paper within. Her father had slanted, neat handwriting, similar to Sophie's own. Blue ink filled up the front and back of both pages.

Sophie's eyes scanned the text slowly, then she read it again, smiling to herself as her father described how he had helped his neighbor recapture her escaped pet rabbit. He ended the letter the same way he had ended the other three,

Good luck, Sophie! I hope you're doing well. I miss you, but I'll see you again soon enough.
~Love, Dad

She refolded the letter and set it aside, picking up Julius's. His writing was small and precise, going in neat, perfect rows of black ink across the page. He never had as much to say as their father did, but then again, Julius was not a sentimental kind of guy.

Julius, Sophie read, had broken up with his girlfriend, Yvonne, yet again. Julius and Yvonne had been dating on and off for the past five years. They fought furiously, broke up, dated other people, missed each other, then got back together again. Sophie had lost track of how many times this cycle had repeated itself, and wondered vaguely if it would ever end.

Yvonne was a model with dark, smooth skin, and waist length, black hair. She had shocking, amber colored eyes, high cheeks bones, and angular features that made her look like an elegant bird. She was smart and funny when she wanted to be, but had a temper that was pushed to the limits by Julius's apathy and infidelity. Sophie liked Yvonne, sure, but knew that she and Julius were no good for each other.

Both of their jobs required them to travel a lot, sometimes for months at a time, so they were only together a few times a year. While for some, distance makes the heart grow fonder, for Julius and Yvonne, distance made the heart grow jealous. They had fierce shouting matches, in which Yvonne threw whatever was within reach at Julius, and both accused the other of cheating (which Sophie was sure that they were both guilty of).

In his letter, Julius claimed that they were finished, for real this time, and that he needed someone to get serious with. Sophie rolled her eyes as she read this, as if Julius would ever be able to settle down with anyone. She doubted that this would be the last time that he and Yvonne would break up. The two of them were like magnets, but like magnets that exploded the second they touched each other. Sophie couldn't imagine being in a relationship so filled with resentment as Julius and Yvonne's was. It seemed miserable and exhausting to her, but she was not about to start trying to figure Julius out now. Plenty had tried, and they had all failed.

Sophie folded up both letters and put them in the bottom of her suitcase with the rest of them. She knew there was no point in keeping them, but she liked knowing that they were there, at least for the duration of training. It felt like having her brother and father close by.

"We need to go!" Etienne announced from her room, "It's a quarter to four!"

They had classes with Zane Dalca three times a week at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Etienne emerged from her room, brushing her messy bangs out of her eyes and biting her lip.

"You hear from your family?" she asked Sophie as she grabbed her bag and they left the apartment together.

"Yeah. Apparently my dad has taken up baking. He says we'll be receiving snicker doodles and peanut butter cookies next week," Sophie told her.

Etienne smiled, "I can't wait!"

Sophie looked down at her feet. Every week her father told her about some new hobby he was trying out: archery, crocheting, dog walking. Sophie felt bad that he had to find all these new ways of keeping himself busy. He sounded lonely. She wished that Julius would stay with him while she was away instead of chasing after moody supermodels.

"Where's Brandy?" Etienne asked as the elevator doors opened.

"I think she's with Max. I passed them in the lobby on my way up," Sophie replied absent mindedly.

Etienne nodded as she pushed the button for the ground floor.

After the first night, Brandy had shaved off her green Mohawk, saying that it was impractical and got in the way, so her head was now covered in ashy blonde fuzz where her hair was starting to grow back.

Brandy was a petite woman in her mid twenties with pale skin and haunting, suspicious green eyes. She looked young for her age with a heart shaped face, full lips, and a small, sloped nose. She never wore makeup, and her daily uniform was comprised of ripped jeans, leather jackets, and old tee shirts. She preferred to keep to herself and rarely engaged anyone in conversation, other than Giannoni, whom she had struck up a close and unexpected friendship with.

Giannoni was clean cut, and carefully groomed. He had neat, slick black hair, beautiful tan skin, and killer bone structure. He liked to wear designer suits and expensive wristwatches and bragged about the fancy cars he drove. At home, his circle was made up of the elite, ranging from CEOs and politicians, to models and artists. He was well educated, having studied criminal law and justice, as well as political science, and he had been a partner in a law firm back home. He spoke four different languages and had traveled all over the world. He was the kind of self obsessed tool Julius would have been friends with.

Brandy by contrast, always looked disheveled, as if it were by shear happenstance that she had gotten out of bed in the morning . Her arms were covered in tattoos, and when she wasn't working as a bartender at a sketchy pub in Philadelphia, she passed along information about cocaine dealers to her cop friends as their CI. One of them, Sophie figured, must have recommended her for the Fortis.

Sophie wasn't sure what it was that the two found to talk about, but there seemed to always be something. Giannoni chatted animatedly while Brandy listened quietly, nodding and giving her input now and then.

As Etienne and Sophie stepped outside, the training grounds were eerily quiet. With only about thirty people on the premises, there was rarely a lot of activity. Others were making their way towards their classes as well. Group A, those going into the research branch, gathered in science lab 7. Group B, the management branch, met in the lecture hall where Martin Lu taught them about the business side of the Fortis. Group C were those becoming agents, and they converged in room 6B.

There were nine of them total in Group C. In addition to Etienne and Sophie, there was their roommate Brandy, as well as Davey Reed, and Max Giannoni, whom they had traveled with on the train, and whom they had most of their training with. There were four other special agents trainees as well, but they had traveled in the other compartment on the train, with the older group. There was Michelle Nguyen, a middle-aged, round faced Chinese woman who had worked for the secret service for the past ten years; Alex Robitielle, a New York City detective with shaggy, sand colored hair and beard, an abrasive personality, and a booming laugh that reminded Sophie of a lion; Dorian Matthews, an ex-marine with graying hair and steel colored eyes that matched his cold manner, and whose height reached nearly seven feet tall; and Niel Tocci, an olive-skinned man with a shaved head, and a face that was set in a permanent grimace. He, Sophie was sure although Niel wouldn't confirm it, had worked for the CIA.

It was intimidating, having these peers whose credentials far outweighed her own. But, hadn't Dalca said himself that that kind of experience wasn't what mattered most? Quick-thinking and a fresh perspective, he claimed, were key.

Room 6B had a white board at the front with an adjacent wall full of windows. There were twelve lab benches, which sat two people each, arranged in four rows of three. The walls were made up of plain, white cinder blocks, with a few harmless Fortis propaganda posters pasted on them. Sophie wondered if there were ever training sessions with enough contenders to fill that room, because their meager group of nine certainly didn't.

When they arrived, Davey Reed was already there, lounging in the back of the room with his chair tipped back and his baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. Michelle Nguyen and Dorian Matthews were at a table in the middle of the room talking about politics and the current administrations failures and triumphs.

Dalca was closing the blinds on the windows and turning on his laptop. Sophie guessed that he had a slideshow prepared for them.

Etienne and Sophie chose a table at the front of the room, and Alex Robitielle, who arrived moments later, sat at the table next to them. Brandy, Max, and Niel Tocci trickled in a few minutes later. Once everyone was there, Dalca opened the slideshow, which was projected on the white board, and stood at the front of the room.

"Today we're going over everything about sanguinarium; what they look like, their eating habits, their behavior, and how tensions between us and them began. Everything," The first slide appeared, displaying a group of sanguinarium. They all had shockingly white hair and white, translucent skin.

"Can anyone tell me what distinguishes, appearance wise, sanguinarium from a human with Albinism?" Dalca asked.

Max answered, "Someone with albinism completely lacks pigment in their hair, skin, and eyes. Sanguinarium, although they have white hair and skin, have black eyes, not pink or blue. They're also much taller than the typical human and they have much sharper teeth."

Dalca nodded, "Very good," he clicked to the next slide. "Now, while sanguinarium may look like us, what they eat is very different. They're carnivores," Sophie studied the food pyramid now displayed on the whiteboard and smirked when she saw the triangle at the top. Where fats and oils usually were, there was instead a little picture of a human.

"Human blood is a delicacy among sanguinarium. Contrary to popular belief, it does not comprise most of their diet. However, that may be because they're not able to get their hands on it very often. Sanguinarium typically like cold, snowy climates, like mountains, or the far north, so until recently, they rarely came across humans.

"What sparked this change?" Dalca asked hypothetically as the next slide appeared on the board. A male sanguinarius was glaring into the camera with his sharp, yellow teeth bared. He had thin, shoulder length white hair, and his small, black eyes were slits. The picture was a close up of his face and upper torso, but it was clear that something, or someone, was restraining him. He had no shirt on, showing his pale, thickly muscled upper body. His skin was so white, Sophie could almost imagine that she could see his heart beating within his chest. His face looked mean and ugly, and Sophie, for the first time, understood why this species was named as it was.

"This handsome gentleman is known as Fannar. He is the leader of the oldest, strongest, and subsequently, most dangerous tribe of sanguinarium, the Baldur. He's been captured only once, when this picture was taken, and escaped soon after. He's been in power for nearly fifteen years and is the very reason that the Fortis was first formed.

"For a long time, sanguinarium lived peacefully beside humans. We weren't exactly allies, but there was rarely violence between us. Like toddlers, we played next to each other, but never actually with each other. Does anyone know why?" Dalca asked.

Once again, Max answered, "It was easier for them not to interact with humans. There was no competition and we didn't bother with their affairs. They were on their own to do whatever they pleased."

"Correct," said Dalca. "As long as humans remained unthreatened, sanguinarium could do whatever they wanted. They were smart enough to know that once humans were given a good pretense, we would try to control them and make them subject to our laws. Can anyone name the other three sanguinarium tribes besides the Baldur?" he surveyed the classroom for someone who had the answer. Max, who surely knew, remained silent, letting someone else have a go, although no one offered up an answer.

"Sophie?" Dalca asked, picking on her.

"Um," she racked her brains, "There are three lesser tribes... There's the Haraldur, the Svana, and the Vigdis."

Dalca smiled. "Exactly. Now, until fifteen years ago, when Fannar's father died and he became the leader of the Baldur, sanguinarium, although not peaceful, kept well away from humans. Fannar, who's arrogant and bloodthirsty, and certainly earns the sanguinarium their name, got the idea in his head that the sanguinarium could somehow challenge humans and become the dominant race."

"But wasn't their subservience all by their own design?" Michelle asked hesitantly.

Dalca replied, "In ways, it certainly was, but they were right about one thing; if they weren't careful, humans would definitely have found a good reason for colonizing them and controlling them with our laws, and now they've given us just that. By waging war against us, the sanguinarium have basically signed their own death warrant."

Reed laughed from the back row, "How exactly did this guy expect his tribe of a few hundred thousand to take on billions of humans who have guns and nuclear bombs?" he asked.

"If they knew what they were up against, the sanguinarium probably wouldn't have rallied behind Fannar in the first place. Before this war, they were rather ignorant of our culture, our numbers, and our military tactics," Dalca explained. "However, it would be very difficult to use weapons, such as nuclear bombs, against sanguinarium without killing huge numbers of human civilians. Since the war began, sanguinarium have flooded urban areas and live on the outskirts of human inhabitations."

"So they're fighting a war they know they're going to lose?" Alex asked.

"Oh, yes," Dalca answered, "If the sanguinarium don't surrender, the Fortis will surely wipe them out. The thing is, they're putting up a pretty good fight. Sanguinarium are determined to take down as many humans as they can. Besides that, they use guerilla war tactics, so we can't fight them in any traditional style. Most countries are also reluctant to spare their troops to fight these guys. That's why the Fortis was formed."

"Do the tribes fight amongst themselves?" Michelle asked.

"They used to, before they came into close contact with humans. But lately, they've had their hands full dealing with us," Dalca explained.

"So it's not really a matter of whether we can beat the sanguinarium, it more a matter of when?" Dorian asked coolly.

"More or less," Dalca shrugged, then continued, "That doesn't, however, mean that there's nothing to worry about. The real problem is that the sanguinarium have developed a taste for attacking civilians, mostly children. It fills their desire for human blood, as well as their cause in the war.

"We have alarms built in on every street to warn civilians when there have been sanguinarius sightings in their area, and there are agents stationed in places popular with the sanguinarium, but our main focus in this branch is to capture sanguinarius leaders. These are the sanguinarium who are the main players in the war, who lead attacks on humans and whom other sanguinarium rally behind. Without them, the sanguinarius cause will be greatly weakened."

"Is there a timeline for when we believe the war will be over?" Alex asked. This was all news to the trainees who had known of the war, but knew few of the details. The Fortis didn't broadcast many of its strategies to the public, for fear that the sanguinarium might find out about them.

"There's a tentative one in place, but another problem is what the end of the war really means," Dalca explained. "Will it be when the sanguinarium surrender, if ever they do? Will it be when they're completely extinct? People don't like the second option very much, but if the sanguinarium continue this foolish fight of theirs, it could very well happen."

The remaining thirty minutes of class were spent in discussion about how best to proceed with the sanguinarium. Max and Reed, to no one's surprise, clashed on nearly every point.

"That's senseless and vile," Max said with disgust. "We're not blind savages, which is what we'd be if you had your way."

Reed scoffed and rolled his eyes, "Why the hell shouldn't we? They kill and attack us, and you don't think we should do a damn thing about it?"

Max took a deep, frustrated breath, "I'm not saying that nothing should be done about it, but you'd have us exterminate them all. They're not all a part of this, just as not all people are a part of this. If we murdered their women and children, and even the men who have done nothing to us, then we're really just as bad as them."

"You're a socialist fucking idiot," Reed said in a matter of fact way, readjusting his hat and looking at Max, waiting for his response.

"I'd rather be a socialist fucking idiot with a brain than a low-class piece of trash whose only solution is to kill everything," Max said slowly and calmly, as if he were explaining something to a small child. appearance

Sophie saw Reed's jaw clench and his nostrils flare. He looked murderous.

Before Reed could retort, Dalca announced, "I think that's enough for one class. That was a good discussion. For next class, I'd like you guys to read chapters eight through eleven in your books. that should be a good supplement to today's lesson."