"Have we heard from the Mercenaries", Evangeline, the head scientist of the secret underground research lab, enquired from her assistant.
"No Ma'am. Their last communique said 'they were commencing the operation'. It's been a few hours since then but we seem to have lost connection to them", the assistant replied.
"Try to reach them again. If you are still unable to re-establish the connection, reach out to our contacts and have them check it out", she instructed. "Yes ma'am! It shall be done", the assistant said and walked out of the office.
"So…do you think they'll succeed in recovering those two test subjects?" Evangeline asked a man dressed snazzily in a black suit and sitting directly opposite her.
"Don't worry! Those mercenaries are the best money could buy. They've had a hundred percent success rate ever since they were first established thirty years ago", the gentleman said with a thick Asian accent.
"If you say so…I just fear all our plans would be laid bare if the world finds out about what we are doing here", Evangeline said as she took a sip from a cup of coffee.
"Fear not…they will not fail. My people have put too much money in this institution for it to fail", the man said as he stood and walked towards the door.
"Although, if it happens that the institution is exposed to the world, we will need to remove all evidence of our involvement. I hope you understand what I mean?" he asked menacingly and left without waiting for an answer.
"Bastards! I've devoted my life and career to this organization and they think they can eliminate me when things get inconvenient for them. Such ungrateful pricks", Evangeline cursed under her breath and sighed.
"They'd better find them soon", she said to herself as she lay back on her seat and contemplated her life.
The Asian accented man and his three body guards stood in an elevator heading to the first floor of the underground institution.
"Is the Helicopter ready to leave?" he asked his men. "Yes Sir! On your orders!", one of the guards replied.
"Good! We need to return to headquarters as soon as possible. There has been no valid data from all the years of research and experimentation. It's about time we pull the plug. We need to pull back all our resources. There are other uses for the billions our government assigns our agency every year", he informed and his guards nodded in response.
The elevator stopped on the first floor and opened to reveal a military grade helicopter on a large platform. The Helicopter; a Boeing CH-47 Chinook, was a twin-engine tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter normally used by the military for troop movement, artillery emplacement and battlefield resupply.
It had several other armed guards standing guard around it. Seeing the man, the guards quickly got into formation and ushered him in using the loading ramp at the back.
The guards followed him in and closed the ramp behind them as the roof above the helicopter started opening up. As the roof opened up, the platform upon which the Helicopter stood slowly lifted upwards.
Above ground, in the icy lands of the artic desert, the ground opened up as the helicopter rose clear above it. Once the platform stopped moving, the pilot activated the ignition as the double rotors of the helicopter started to spin quickly.
The helicopter slowly rose off the ground and flew towards the sky. After traveling through the sky for a few miles, a large, clawed hand suddenly appeared out of the clouds and plucked the helicopter right out of the sky, causing alarms to ring within it and its passengers to be thrown out of their seats.
"What happened? Did we collide with something?" the Asian man asked the pilots as he was helped to his feet by his guards.
"We don't know sir. The chopper is unable to move anymore. It's almost like we are stuck in the middle of the sky! None of the controls are responding!" the lead pilot cried out.
Before anyone else could comment on their situation, they felt the helicopter turning by itself and they quickly held on to the closest bolted thing. When the chopper stopped turning, the sight beyond the windshield revealed a large, almost glowing, reptilian eye staring right at them.
"The hell is that thing?!!" the pilot shouted in panic. "Quick…get us out of here! I'm not ready to be eaten by such a monster!" the Asian man shouted anxiously to the pilot.
"We can't move sir! The rotors are not working! All the controls are shot!!" the lead pilot shouted back as he pushed each and every button on his dashboard.
......
Within the clouds, with the chopper in his hand, Samuel's massive Dragon form hovered in the air, with Dr. Michaelson, Silendiana, Catherina, the twins, Delgato and the now conscious brothers on his large back.
Unlike the others who looked comfortable standing upon Samuel's back, the two brothers were on all fours trying to hold on to avoid falling off.
"That's quite the catch you have there, Sammy", Sylvia pointed out taking a look at the chopper laying in her friend's palm.
"It came from the hidden institute so I was curious", Samuel replied as he used a claw to slice through the roof of the chopper, exposing its passengers.
"Do you guys recognize any of them?" Samuel asked the group. "I have no idea", Sylvester said with a shrug. The two brothers also took a look and shook their heads.
"Hmm! That man in the suit is Chen Yũxuãn, the director of China's branch of the P.E.I.B.", Dr. Michaelson announced.
"""The what?!""" Catherina, the twins and Delgato all asked in unison. "The P.E.I.B is the Paranormal and Extraterrestrial Investigations Bureau. They are an international organization that was kept secret from the public. They were created to mainly deal with meta-related, abnormal and unexplainable occurrences as well as extraterrestrial encounters".
"A while after their creation, its members were fully made up of radical human supremists; seeking to wipe out or imprison any meta-human who got caught in a situation whether they were victims or the culprits".
"The A.W.S.S (Association of World Science Scholars) has managed to reign them in as best it could to prevent the indiscriminate capture and elimination of the meta humans of the world, but there was little they could actually do to protect them all".
"They consider each and every meta a threat to humanity that must be removed. There has been a long-lasting rumour about their connection to this hidden agency and seeing him today coming from there clears up all remaining doubts", Dr. Michaelson explained".
"So…what do I do with them? Kill them?" Samuel asked bluntly. "No! Just extract his knowledge and erase their memory, then leave them stranded here. I'm sure their people have a way to track them. We will be done here by the time they are found", Silendiana suggested.
Chen Yũxuãn and his guards were frozen in terror watching the scene before them. They literally sat in the palm of a terrifying monster and didn't know what fate had in store for them.
Hearing his secret identity being exposed in the conversation between the monster and the people riding it, Yũxuãn felt his blood run cold. The monster was clearly after their organization and he just so happened to fall right into its hands…literally.