For Tomorrow

Carmine stood on his knees, maybe there was still time to pull him out! Maybe Duke hadn't gotten burned yet! Carmine got up to run to the burning helicopter when he felt two sets of strong arms wrapped around him. He tried to shove them off of him.

"Fucking get off of me! He's still okay! Let me just get him out of there!" Carmine yelled as he pushed, twisted, and writhed out of his captors grip.

"He's gone Carmine!" Marcus yelled as he felt a ping of sorrow build up in him again. There went another, just like Dom.

"No! He can't be dead! He can't be! He's all I have left! I was supposed to keep him safe like I promised! Get the fuck off of me!"

Marcus and Baird just held Carmine as he ran out of animalistic rage and descended into a broken down wreck. Sobbing heavily as Sam came around tried to cheer him up.

"It's okay Carmine, you couldn't have done anything," she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck, he leaned forward and started to cry into her chest plate.

"Fuck! He can't be gone!" Carmine yelled in between great big sobs.

The group was silent for a bit before Marcus peeled off to call for another raven. Baird eventually left to keep watch; this day couldn't have gotten any worse for Carmine. But nothing would be the same again, no family left for him to go home to. Nothing but the hollow memories left behind in their wake.

"Could one of you help me get this rubble off of me? I'm actually ten feet from you." Duke crackled over their TAC/COM.

Carmine looked around and saw a hand waving from some building rubble. He ran over and began to throw pieces of rock off of his baby brother. Eventually he found his helmet and started to clear more rock off of him. There he was, there was Duke. Carmine grabbed him and held him so tight he could have smothered him to death, but he didn't. His little brother was alive.

"Don't fucking ever do that to me again." Carmine told Duke as Marcus handed him his helmet. Carmine accepted it and put it on one handed while he helped Duke up onto his feet.

"I'm fine bro. I was thrown out of the helicopter when the rubble hit the rotor. It chucked me out and then I was covered in rubble. Got knocked out for a few minutes or else I would have called sooner. No idea how I survived that."
"Same way I survived nearly being hit by a car, shot in the helmet, and then three gunker attacks back at Hanover. Sheer dumb luck." Clay responded as he picked up Duke's Lancer and handed it to him.

"Okay numbskulls next question. Why the fuck was there a hammer of dawn strike? Anya has the sensor but she wouldn't use it unless shit really was going down." Baird piped in ruining the moment.

"We better get over there stat. Let's move Delta." Marcus ordered as the five-man squad ran towards the hammer of dawn strike area.

######

Anya groaned as she tried to lean forward. The explosion had thrown her back ten feet into a wall and she had cracked her head against the hard concrete. Nothing seemed broken so she was glad for that.

"Anya, come in." she heard Marcus' voice over the TAC/COM. He no doubt was worried sick right now.

"Here Marcus, everything's fine." She responded as she looked around for Alex who had also been knocked out from the force of the hammer strike.

"No it's not. The hammer of dawn took out our ride and nearly killed Duke and shit is really starting to go down here. So there better be a damn good reason for using it."

Anya might have looked like a child next to Marcus but that didn't mean that she would back down when Marcus started to get pissed at her.

"Listen to me you big lug," Anya told him with irritation heavy in her voice as she stood up and looked around for him, he would no doubt be getting close. "We had a beast bigger than a berserker that didn't go down when we blew half of its body off with a grenade." Anya sighed and kicked a rock, Marcus had a point, she should have gotten further away. "Is Duke okay?"

"Fine Anya. Reduced Clay to a big pile of tears, worth being dead for five minutes." Duke piped in over the line.

"Shut up Duke. Noogie time!" Clay hollered over the TAC/COM.

"Hey! Hey! Stop it…" Duke began to yell before he was cut off.

"Hey Anya Sam here. Just want to let you know that Marcus is sorry for acting like an ass, Clay is brutally manhandling Duke, and Baird is wanking off in the corner. We should be at the rendezvous site in ten. See ya then honey."

"Roger, over and out." Anya finished as she shouldered her Lancer and walked over to Alex who had groggily stood up with a hand on her head. There was a long cut on her head and she was staggering around, obviously she had hit her head pretty hard when the hammer hit and threw her backwards.

Alex stopped for a second and went over to the side of the building before retching her breakfast onto the sidewalk. She was in bad condition and needed a hospital, stat.

Anya ran over and grabbed her before she collapsed onto the ground. Alex had a terrible concussion, one that would need immediate treatment or else she could die if her brain swelled.

"Hang on Brand, we'll get there in one piece." Anya whispered as she drug the barely conscious girl along beside her.

######
Jace and Cole slowed down as they reached the meet up point. The hammer of dawn had fired moments after they had gotten clear of the blast zone; they'd narrowly avoided being incinerated in the blast radius.

"Shit!" Jace hollered as they stopped running, they'd continued running for at least twenty minutes past the hammer strike just to make sure that the beast hadn't shrugged off that blast and ran behind him to rip them a new one.

"You damn right!" Cole yelled as he slowed to a light jog and then finally stopped. Cole walked over to a bench and placed Ayers down on it gently. Over the horizon a King Raven traveled towards them with powerful strokes of its propellers. Cole put a hand above his eyes to get the sun out of his eyes. "Our ride's here!" Cole whooped as he pressed two fingers to his coms device. "I don't know where the rest of you are but it seems our ride is inbound!"

Cole was so excited he almost didn't notice the heavy oak briefcase that his boot nudged against. Normally this wouldn't have made him look; he bumped against things all the time. But this time he looked down to see the oddity, ignoring any response from the other members of the team.

It was a normal briefcase made of fine leather, the type of leather it would take a year worth of paychecks to buy, with golden padded handles, and a number lock. Cole picked it up and experimentally tried to click it open. It wouldn't open, Cole tried to flick the numbers around but the numbers wouldn't budge. There was nothing wrong with the number lock: it must have been there for decoration.

The Raven landed and it jolted Cole back to alert status. Holding onto the briefcase he went over and picked Ayers up and helped him onto the helicopter, laying him down on a seat and strapping him in so he wouldn't jostle around so much and potentially make his state worse than it already was.

"Where's the rest of your squad solider?" the Raven pilot yelled over the rotors.

"They'll be here in five to ten minutes!" Jace yelled back.

"Tell 'em to hurry up! Immulsion doesn't work as well after that big bang few months back!"

"They'll be here!" Jace shouted before shutting one of the doors and then leaning against the new wall. Jace looked over at Cole, noting the briefcase that Cole was just carrying around. Jace pointed at the briefcase. "What's that?" he asked as he walked over to look at it.

"I don't know, figured Baird would want to have a look at it when we get back. Just felt like bringin' it back."

Jace felt the chill come back for a moment before he shifted thoughts. Now they would be going back to Azura where he could get some rest and forget about monsters coming out of the dark. That put a smile on his face as he noticed the remaining six members of the squad come over a hill and towards the King Raven. He waved towards them, time to go home.