Chapitre 127: A gaze into the past intermission Edward (1)
I shuffle my feet as I toy with the letter in my hand. I can discern my son's elegant handwriting and know he would want me to open it immediately but right now I just can't. The grief brought by the news alongside this letter is too soul-crushing for me. My son and his wife have both died during a standard military deployment. Death in the line of duty is seen as honorable in our household but to think that he would leave this world before me...
And to think he even left a letter for me to read. I should really open it. But it's too early, I'm not ready to read his last words.
I carefully place the letter on the kitchen counter and switch on the coffee machine that dominates the kitchen space. My late wife had loved coffee to an absurd degree leading to us buying this piece of cutting-edge technology.
It has a function to create nearly every coffee imaginable if given the ingredients. Despite that, I press the button combination for the simplest type of coffee there is. Simple black coffee. No add-ons, no milk, no sugar, no nothing. Just coffee. Or disgusting black hell brew as my son used to say when he was younger. Back when things weren't that complicated yet.
By the time I end my journey down memory lane a soft bell ring comes from the machine to announce that my coffee has been made. I grab the cup and down half of it in one gulp. The bitterness explodes in my mouth and the caffeine helps my mind deal with all the crap going on right now.
I'm too old for this!
Feeling new strength flowing through me, probably an illusion created by the sudden influx of caffeine in my body, I pick up the letter again. I place down the coffee that I'm holding in one hand and routinely examine the letter for marks of having been tampered with.
A routine I had already gone through five times earlier. Same as before I find no evidence or marks of tampering. The letter and its content should be from my son.
I sigh out loud hoping to drive away the hesitation that is stopping me from opening this damn letter. It seems to work and before I find another reason to hinder me, I grab a letter opener and slice open the top of the envelope.
I pull out a slightly crumpled paper from inside the envelope. I frown at the edges of the paper that has been handled far too rough. Was he in a hurry when writing this?
My eyes dart to the text on the paper and I find myself reading the letter out loud.
"Dad, sorry for the roughed-up paper. I know it irks you but we deploy in five minutes so time is of the essence. If this letter reaches you both Mia and I are dead. Should that be the case I need you to go get Aisha from the Collins' house as soon as you can. We've been noticing people spying on our house over the past few days and I'm afraid the matter from back then is finally coming back to bite us. I'm sorry for shoving all of this onto you. Please be safe and take care of Aisha. Signed, Jeremy."
I pull out my lighter from my pocket and set fire to the letter. I throw it into the sink and watch it burn while I pour the other half of the coffee down my throat. As I'm about to go up to the bedroom to grab some things I hear a barely audible click from the front door.
There are only four keys to this house. One is with me, two were with my son and his wife now lying in a pile of their belongings delivered alongside the letter, and the last one I buried personally next to my wife telling no one about it.
So unless my wife has been raised by a necromancer and I'm about to shoot the hell out of some undead corpse, the lock is being picked. And whoever is picking it surely doesn't have good intentions.
I retreat into the kitchen and pull down the milk dispensing metal straw on the coffee machine. Both my late wife and I hate warm milk so I had it modified to act as a lever. As soon as I pull it a compartment of the coffee machine is pulled back to reveal two freshly polished handles.
Normal families might consider this a danger but everyone in our family loves guns so we've got them hidden in nearly every place we could fit them all over the house. Hiding two handguns in a coffee machine is only the tip of the iceberg.
I pull them out of the hidden compartment and they slide right into my hands. Phantom Phoenix handgun series with extra penetration force and twelve shots per magazine. Only available to military personnel these babies can penetrate through solid steel plates if you get close enough.
Armed with two handguns I spy through the kitchen windows into our backyard and immediately spot two tracks of unevenness in the grass that is trimmed to a fault. One track goes towards the back door while the other leads to a very obvious ladder.
So one of them is at the back door, another one on the roof probably trying to enter through a window and then there is an unknown number at the front door. Not a good situation to be in but it could be worse.
Another click sounds from the front door. Louder this time and probably a sign that they successfully picked the lock. Probably a thief or similarly classed person with them since the lock is supposed to be able to resist being picked.
The door handle is slowly pressed down and the door swings open. Before they can even enter I open fire from across the house firing six shots in quick succession.
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone