Bullets flew through the air, cracking the walls behind the team and showering them with debris. Gunfire ratta-tat-tat-ed and echoed throughout the building, drawing more enemy guards to come in and join their comrades. The situation was grim.

Mark was more than a little pissed off. The raid was supposed to go easy, take out the exterior guards, set the charges, and leave. It turned into an all-out slugfest of who had more firepower when one of his idiot teammates didn’t clear his area and they were made by the enemy.

“Left side, right there!” Mark shouted. One of his men turned his attention to the left and lit up several guards with machine-gun fire from his Mk48.

Mark didn’t leave the Marines for this to go wrong. He had taken a job with Academi because they were supposed to be the best. When the CIA hired them, he knew it was the best way to make big money, and he was glad he left the Corps for it. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure Academi was the best place to go work.

Mark pulled up his M4 and fired three shots into an enemy guard above them. His M4 and his teammates weapons were rechambered for 7.62x39mm ammunition or other non-NATO rounds to minimize the chances of implication of the United States.

Mark and his team retreated backwards through a door into the next room where they could take cover for a minute. The facility had concrete walls in the event of a chemical spill, and those walls were equally good for stopping small arms fire. Problem was, the charges they had were timed, and no concrete walls would survive the massive explosions of the charges with the chemicals they would set ablaze.

“We have about two minutes to get out of here,” Mark’s team leader said. They were stuck in a room with only one exit; the entrance. “We push. Mark, take Chapps and James and open fire to the left. Me, Grayson, and Burns will take the right, and we push out separately. Meet up at the extraction point.”

“Let’s go!” Mark said.

Mark and his men burst through the door and lit up the enemy fighters with automatic fire, suppressing half of them, killing a few, and startling the others into missing. As they moved, the team leader took his men and did the same to the right side, disappearing in mere moments to escape through the maze of chemical containers.

Mark’s team ran like hell to escape, bullets flying and slamming into the walls and containers around them. Invisible gas leaked through the holes with loud squeaks, and all the enemy fighters scattered to avoid breathing it. Whatever this stuff was, it was clearly not good.

They had a moment in the clear, but before long, the fire started up again. Mark led the charge to escape, intent on getting himself out at any cost. He wasn’t interested in dying like some no-name henchmen in some generic spy novel. In this business, you had to do whatever it took to get home and get paid. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one with this mindset.

Mark turned right to open fire on the enemy, but as he turned, he felt multiple hard thuds against his chest, and he went careening to the ground. The momentum of several rounds colliding with his ballistic vest knocked him off his feet, and he went rolling into a support column.

Much like him, too, his teammates were solely intent on escaping, and kept on running. Mark squirmed his way to the other side of the column under enemy fire and took cover there. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he had about fifty seconds left to get away from the facility.

Just ahead of him, like a magical wish-granting fairy heard out his needs, he spotted an emergency exit door. With all the strength he could muster with his busted ribs, he picked himself up and threw himself forward until he made it to the door, taking about ten seconds to get there.

The door was locked, though, and bullets still rang through the air around him. One bullet caught him in the rear plate of his ballistic vest, under his right shoulder blade, and he dropped and rolled back to the column. He had thirty seconds left.

Mark unloaded the remainder of his magazine into the door right around where the lock would be, loaded in a fresh magazine, and kept on firing until the door came loose. He had fifteen seconds to get out.

And he sprinted like an Olympian for the exit. The enemy fire was concentrated around the door now, but thankfully, they were terrible at shooting, and Mark was able to run through the door in seconds. He continued his sprint away from the building until the explosion came. There was a massive flash and shockwave, and everything went black.

Mark came to slowly, head ringing like an old telephone. As he regained focus of vision, he spotted his rifle ahead of him and crawled to it. It felt like an eternity, but once he finally had it, he spun around to aim at the building in case anyone somehow, by miracle, survived the explosion.

Clearly, no one did. There was smoke everywhere, fires burning random patches of grass that Mark had no idea were there before the mission. There were no body parts anywhere, nor weapons or other signs of life. There also wasn’t any rubble, concrete or metal.

Mark looked around and realized something wasn’t right; now, he was in a valley, where there were plenty of trees and plant life everywhere except where the explosion decimated the area. He had just been fighting these guys in middle-of-nowhere Sudan. How did these mountains get here?

Mark still couldn’t hear anything, so he simply picked himself up and checked everything. He remembered being hit several times, and the holes in his vest confirmed it. He still had his rifle, and the two pistols he also kept, an M45 he was issued in the Corps and a Glock 19 that he liked for missions where he used suppressors on his weapons. His basic other gear included a six inch survival knife, compass, some paracord, a lighter, and a multitool.

As much of a mystery as it was how he got here, he knew he had to move. If any enemies were around, they wouldn’t be too welcoming, and odds were good his team was nowhere to be found nearby. Right now, he had to get his bearings and survive. When night fell, he could use the stars to navigate, and then he’d be on his way.

“What the hell.”

The stars made absolutely no sense that night. Mark had set up camp for himself, using broken tree branches to make bedding and shelter and creating a small fire pit with stones. He arranged the stones so that they would reflect the heat into his small shelter for the night and keep him warm.

But as warm as he could be, he felt cold and distant from everything he knew. The stars were totally off, with not a single recognizable constellation in the sky. He had been to this area of Africa before, and this had never happened. It just didn’t make any sense.

“Screw it,” he said. “I’ll figure it out in the morning.”

Mark climbed into his shelter and slept out the night.  He would need his rest for what would come the next day.

“What in Tartarus?”

The voice came loud and unexpected, waking Mark from his slumber and getting him to draw his Glock at the source of the noise. What he saw was the last straw in the insanity that was the previous twenty-four hours.

A real life, bona-fide Griffin was standing fifteen feet from his camp. When he pointed the pistol at it, the bird creature froze and put its hands up, indicating it knew what a gun was. Slowly and painfully, Mark crawled out of his shelter, still pointing the gun at the creature, until he was standing tall.

“What the hell,” Mark replied.

“Could you not point that thing at me?” the griffin asked.

“I’ll keep it where it is, thanks,” Mark said suspiciously.

“I’m just hiking, for goodness sake, and I came running when I heard the explosion,” the griffin said. “I always hike this way. Just never found a human before. What are you doing out here?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mark said. He still had the gun up.

The griffin observed the human. He was standing more limp to one side, like he was injured, and the grimace on his face drove the look home. He was also covered in dirt and soot, as if he escaped a burning building. His clothing was all black, and he had several serious weapons on him.

“Are you fresh from battle?” the griffin asked. Before Mark could answer, it continued. “Who were you fighting?”

“Nothing happened,” Mark maintained. He was beginning to lose his patience.

The griffin frowned. “Look, I want to help,” it said. “But I need to know if I can trust you.”

Mark thought about it for a moment. Here he was, talking to a talking griffin, a mythical fairy-tale creature, arguing about trust. Any lesser man may have been driven mad, but not he. He was a survivalist.

“I was fighting terrorists,” he said. Truth, and he could build any lies he had to off of it.

The griffin squinted at him. “If you speak true, then I would be inclined to trust you,” It said. “But how do I know it’s true?”

“If it wasn’t, I’d’ve shot you where you stand and taken whatever I need off your body,” Mark said coolly. The griffin stopped.

“Huh,” it said. “I suppose you have a point.”

“Yes,” Mark said with a sigh. “Now, can you help me out?”

“Yes, I can take you to my village,” the griffin said. “We have someone there who can treat your injuries. We will also feed you and give you a place to stay.”

“And what do you get in return?” Mark asked.

“Whatever your great talent is, we’ll ask that you use it to help us,” the griffin said. Mark didn’t really get it, but he went with it anyway. Odds were that they couldn’t use his talents anyway and he would just leave.

Mark made sure he had everything and then followed alongside the griffin back to its village. It tried to explain to him something or other about their local culture and the foods they had, but Mark wasn’t inclined to care at all. He just wanted food and a bath.

“What’s your name?” he asked to derail the griffin.

“Daphne,” it said. It had a high voice and a feminine name, so it was clearly a girl. “What’s yours?”

“James,” Mark said instinctively. He always gave the fake name James when people asked him for it without him approaching them.

His derailment attempt failed, though, and Daphne kept on talking through the entire walk back to her village. Mark listened to her when she talked about the area, but zoned out a little when she got on about her village. He was more of a learn-as-you-go type, and he would learn as he went on his journey back to base. Wherever that was.

Next Chapter: Change of Employment Estimated time remaining: 8 Minutes