The goosebumps disappeared when Liv's skin began to heat up like a terminal patient's. She steamed in the frigid air, and her muscles began to expand. Hard dense muscle began to appear where moments earlier there had been none. Bony limbs were replaced by hard vascular beef. Her pants legs exploded as her quads and hams and glutes expanded past the materials ability to contain them. The waistband was next as her hips themselves grew too. She salivated with anticipation when she heard a man's death scream. It was a terrified wail that made Liv begin to get moist between her legs. She itched to feel some blood against her skin. Her nipples looked like pins on the ever expanding breath of her chest. They poked through her blouse first like the tips of battering rams and her pectorals provided the power. She ran towards the collection of squat buildings now, gathering speed even as her body continued to change, to grow.

Rips of automatic fire erupted into the once quiet valley. Liv knew the sound of AK-47's and she knew that they were more than useless against her master. Just as the thought entered her head, she saw sparks from bullets ricocheting off of Damteni's impervious skin. She was only a few hundred meters away now, but her focus was on joining her master and didn't see the men setting up a crew served machine gun. The gunner had first wanted to shoot at the group of men who had to be attacking his comrades, but he hadn't seen any. Instead he'd seen a target off in the distance coming towards him at great speed.

The first bullet skipped past Liv and she didn't even see it. The next one hit her in the side of the neck taking flesh with it. The third shot was right on target, hitting the center of her massive chest. The force made her stumble. The machine-gunner looked away then, thinking that the target was taken care of.

Blood still dripped from Liv's wounds, leaving a red arc raining through the air as she jump several stories high before landing on a man's shoulders so hard that she broke his back with a quick wet snap. The guy manning the gun felt the ground shake. He turned and his field of view was filled by a pulsing wall of nearly naked muscle. He lifted the gun off of its bipod, trying to train it on the target, but Liv reached past him and lifted the machine-gun with one hand. She brought it high over her head and slammed it down onto the top of the man's head. The gun barely registered the impact, but the man's skull split open like a ripe melon. Blood, brains, and bits of skull showered Liv. She brought the gun down on top of him again and again and again, getting some level of revenge for the pain he'd caused. She hadn't finished turning so the pain had been that much greater. She didn't finish until she'd pounded his body beyond any recognition. Only then did she look down at the dying man beneath her bare feet. Her weight alone had been enough to force all the air from his lungs. He got some short lived relief when she stepped off of him, but she just bent down and lifted him to her new eye level. She could have killed him any number of ways, but she wanted to see the look on this man's face as she squeezed the life out of him. She'd have squeezed very, very slowly if not for the dozens of rips of automatic gunfire she was hearing and the half dozen explosions. Her pecs alone could have crushed his ribcage, but instead she simply folded her arms across her chest with this man in the middle. Blood erupted from his mouth and eyes and nose, but Liv didn't wait to enjoy it. She dropped him and ran. There were more people to kill.

Bullets flew in every direction as the smugglers tried to defend not just their merchandise but their lives as well. Liv leapt to the top of one of the single story buildings with ease and looked down at two men setting up a defensive position. They'd learn that there was no defense from Liv and her master. The men barely had time to react when Liv landed right behind them. She grabbed one man by the hair dragging him roughly towards her. She grabbed the other man's face like she was palming a basketball and pulled him close too. She curled her arms, bringing both men completely off the ground. They struggled and screamed and clawed at Liv's hands. She ignored them. She turned her head side to side as she watched her biceps rise and separate from the massive triceps below. When she thought her already big biceps were big enough, she forced the heads of the two men down on top of the craggy peaks. She released them only to trap both of them with her forearms. She could have squeezed, but she had a better idea.

Her face took on a look of faraway concentration and she began to flex her arms hard. Veins shot across her arms like cracks in shattering stone. Her biceps blossomed, her already flexed peak growing four, five, six inches higher without any stop in sight. The meaty muscle bellies bulged with expanding power and hard size as she bore down, digging the tips of her fingers into her palms, tightening her fists so much that her forearms actually doubled, putting downward pressure on the struggling men whose heads were being lifted by the still rising mountainous peaks. Her body vibrated now. She stared at her arms in open amazement and power hungry lust. Even on her huge body, her arms were massive. She narrowed her eyes and demanded more from her amazing super human body. Her muscles were far bigger than any bodybuilding who had ever stepped on a stage. She bit her lip as she flexed her arms harder, pouring more into it, making her skin stretch so much that it looked like transparent plastic wrap.

She heard the first crack of surrendering bone as her rising biceps forced a man's head into the anvil of her thick forearm. His scream went up two octaves and a tingle went through Liv's body. She felt her clit getting hard, and it took a lot to make Liv that horny, but even she'd never done anything like this before. She strained now, pushing back the temptation to bend her arms more, and instead demanded more from her biceps. She was so focused she almost dared her muscles to defy her, and they did not. Her biceps surprisingly surged gaining several inches out of nowhere. Like a runner getting a second wind, Liv's biceps surged faster than the compressing skulls could collapse in on themselves. Instead her peaks caved in the sides of the skulls, breaking jaws and cheeks and temples. Blood sprayed and flowed down Liv's mighty muscle like some sort of sacrifice. The men actually lived long enough to feel Liv's biceps invading their heads, cleaving them nearly in half. When her biceps had almost risen to where she could reach down and touch them, she released the dead bodies. She looked at her biceps, at their size and at the blood and gore topping her personal mountains like snowcaps.

She continued cutting a bloody swath through these smugglers, using the gunfire to direct her from target to target. She threw the bodies into the little street, making a pile so that they could see that their resistance was more than useless. She came through the backdoor of a building searching for some men she'd seen go inside. She didn't even begin to bother to look for danger when suddenly there was an explosion near her right leg. A pressure wave sliced into Liv like a huge barely visible blade. The blast lifted her off of her feet and threw her completely through a wall. The back half of the building fell down on top of her. The group of men who had led her inside felt some relief that one of these creatures was at least dealt with, but then they felt the ground begin to shake. Small pebbles of broken concrete, brick, and stone began to fall down from the top of the tumbled pile of rubble. The entire mass of rubble rose off of the uneven floor until the men could see beneath it. They saw two huge arms straightening and two naked, painfully striated, hard flexing pecs. Tons of material rose higher into the air, and then they saw the bricks of her abs flexing, lifting her torso and the entire mass of rubble higher off the ground. Bigger pieces of debris started raining off the tops and sides, but those men didn't wait around long enough to see it. Liv watched them running away and jumped up from her early tomb and chased. With her super human speed she caught up with the slowest of these smugglers and quickly held him over her head. The man screamed for just a second before Liv separated her arms pulling this man's body completely in half, letting the better part of his innards slip down onto her upturned face.

More explosions shook the area as Damteni ran through booby traps. Liv saw him kill two men and throw them onto her growing pile of bodies. She smiled a blood smeared grin and continued building to building, street by little street finding more men to add to her slaughter. Several men ran to a military surplus truck. The diesel started and it was like a beckon to Liv's ears. She was about to enter a building near the end of the camp, but changed directions and sprinted towards the sound of that engine. The relatively small passenger cab was stuffed with men, and the driver had just passed first gear when Liv first saw the truck. Others were grabbing on to the back end while other men were hanging on to the running boards near the fuel tanks.

The driver had just pushed in the clutch to change gears when Liv caught up to the rear of the truck, grasping the back end with her finger tips. She dragged along behind the truck until she got a better grip then with one leg struck forward and the other curled in for support, she pulled backwards against all the momentum of the truck. The men inside the cab felt as if they'd been a crash, like they'd hit an invisible wall. Liv's feet broke through the gravel road, several inches into the dirt. The steel frames of the chassis twisted under the load. The driving wheels bounced along uselessly as Liv righted herself. She curled the truck to her waist now. Her already thickly pumped biceps barely registered the strain. Men began to escape the cab, and she had to put a stop to that. She tipped the truck quickly. Putting her hands flat on the chassis rails, raising the rear of the truck towards the sky so quickly that the men in the cab were rolled onto the windshield and roof. When the truck was vertical she grabbed he rails again. Her fingers dug into the steel and with a grunt and a mighty tug, she lifted the truck straight up into the air bounced it twice before throwing it high. It flew up over the tops of the buildings, over the distant tree tops. Liv could have moved out of the way and let the truck crash catastrophically to the ground, but she stepped under it, and the truck crashed into her. She held out her left arm, locking her elbow. The grill bent away from her hand almost instantly. The steel was no match for her fingers. Then the radiator burst in a cloud of boiling water and steam. The big still spinning steel fan was next. It cut into Liv's flesh, but her bones and muscle were far too hard for it to shred and instead the blades of the fan were bent back as it turned against her wrist and forearm. The engine block was harder, strong enough to survive this impact. Liv's triceps bloomed like expanding mushroom clouds as the full weight of the truck and all of its momentum began to exert itself. The motor mounts weren't nearly up to the challenge and all the bolts sheered like they were made of butter rather than hardened metal. The engine became a massive cannonball as it moved towards the cab where the men were still trapped. The cab began to distort now as the shock of impact started deforming the sheet metal. The chassis too began to bend as the engine snatched at it. The force pushing against Liv's arm doubled every split second. The triceps and deltoids on her left arm were so hot that they glowed and smoked in the cold air. The striations in the muscles were so deep. Her teeth set on edge as she destroyed this truck with one arm. Her hand was still against the engine block as the truck continued to crash against her until the back of the engine crashed through the firewall and into the cab. One man was killed instantly. The destroyed grill was just inches from Liv's face when she finally decided to unleash a punch from her right arm that sent the truck flying back into the air even higher than before. It flew off into the distance, landing on a building, toppling it immediately. Liv was already after it. She jumped onto the wreck of the truck, extending her arms as far as she could and began to squeeze. There was almost no resistance left in the battered steel. She worked her hands furiously, trying to compress the big cab before the men inside it could stir. The windows shattered and Liv kept compressing the cab making it smaller and smaller.

The first man screamed as the pressure increased. Liv grinned and worked even harder. Her back looked like a living masterwork of machinery as she kneaded the truck like dough, folding sections back onto themselves before pressing down. More men screamed shrill screeches of death. When it was small enough, Liv yanked the cab off of the mangled chassis and held it out in front of her like a gigantic medicine ball. Blood oozed from the steel like the metal itself was bleeding as Liv pulled every part of the truck towards her unyielding torso, crushing the truck against her naked, blood soaked chest and petrified abs. There were still muffled screams coming from inside as another fluid mixed with the oil and blood on the ground. Liv's muscles began to contract uncontrollably. Her hips bashed against the ball of steel faster and faster. Blood retreated down her legs as her own juices spilled from her steaming box. Her asscheeks were like imploding stars, getting denser and harder as she flexed them with unbelievable power. The last man in the truck had long since died when Liv's orgasm began to abate. She opened her eyes to see her arms holding something about a quarter the size of the original green ball. She opened her arms and it shook the ground when it splashed down into a puddle of blood and girlcum. Her chest heaved as she stood there sucking air, but not from the workout. Waves of pleasure still broke over her, until she turned to see her Master standing there.

… five days later…

US Army Specialist Norma Carlton leaned her head back against the sidewall of the C-130 transport plane, trying to rest even if she couldn't sleep. Her team's operational tempo was crazy, but that was normal these days. Norma was always up for a challenge anyway. She and the rest of the team were on their way to yet another mission. With nothing to do for a while, Norma found herself with time to think, to reflect. She was the youngest member of the team by two years, and newest to the Army by three and a half. She sat next to Mike, her partner and unofficial tutor. He was patient with her and didn't expect too much or too little like the rest of the guys. She couldn't blame them at all. This was just her sixth month in uniform and never mind the fact that she was a woman, an extremely muscled woman with super human strength, but a woman just the same.

After enlistment, the Army had learned about her strength first. She'd joined up to be a soft skin vehicle driver, but eventually the powers that be found out that she could lift more than the strongest man they'd ever seen. Some people had wanted to put her into Special Programs like all the other gifted people in US government service, but the Army had fought hard to keep her. They'd wanted their own gifted freak to command. Things really got insane when the brass realized that Norma could retain information from anything she saw, heard, smelled, touched, or did. She could recite entire textbooks word for word after reading them once. She could fieldstrip and repair any weapon after watching someone else do it once. That ability had put Norma on the super duper fast track. She'd tried to explain that while she had all this information in her head, it wasn't the same as learning it. She could rattle off the specs to her firearm as well if not better than the engineers who had designed it, but she wasn't as good a shot as any of the guys on the team. She'd absorbed everything to be absorbed about small unit tactics, but without clear instructions or someone else to follow on the battlefield, Norma would be lost, not knowing what to do first or what to do last. She was getting better, but it was a slow process. No textbook could replace experience. She was still scared to death of making a mistake that would cost her team.

She'd completed Basic Training, Ranger School, and the vaunted Q Course in unheard of time. Her Special Forces training was technically still ongoing. The colonel said that she could wear the Green Beret since she was a part of a unit, but she refused since she said that she hadn't earned it yet. All of that was in the back of her mind though. The most important training to her currently was Jump School. She'd passed with flying colors, which was great because she was about to execute her first combat jump. She'd never been to Pakistan and she wondered what the weather was like this time of year. Norma wanted to smile at her internal joke, but it wasn't funny enough.

She thought that maybe she was getting a little burned out after going on so many missions, but it didn't matter. Her unit was about to cycle off. She wasn't sure what the others were going to do, but she was going back home to Baltimore. She wanted to eat some of her mom's cooking, and maybe even to hear her brothers' stupid laughs. That was enough motivation to keep Norma's mind on the task at hand.

She looked towards the front of the plane where her unit commander, Captain Steve Hodges, was going over something with an intelligence guy she'd never seen before. Of course the 'spook' wasn't going to jump out of the plane with them. He'd let the Army do his dirty work. Norma grinned then because that's what the Army was there for. An instructor told her that she had to love this stuff. She wasn't sure if she loved it, but there were parts that she really, really liked, and when the red lights came on inside the plane she realized that there were parts that she hated too.

Norma stood up from her seat, every idle thought leaving her mind in a hurry. Wind whipped around the fuselage when the airplane boss opened the rear door. She moved into position behind Brent and in front of Mike. Everyone gave a quick equipment check to the soldier in front of them. A double pat on the shoulder said that everything was ready. Things happened quickly after that. Steve went first. She saw him step off of the back of the airplane door like he was stepping from one room into another. He disappeared almost instantly and before Norma could even realize fully, she'd stepped off the door herself. She fell through the inky blackness of the night sky. Gravity and wind snatched at her face. She oriented herself towards the ground, but couldn't see any of her team. She felt alone as she rushed towards a ground that she couldn't even see. That's what the special watch was for.

The digital numbers clicked down to zero. She pulled the deployment cord, and the parafoil deployed perfectly. Norma's headlong fall because a controlled decent. She grabbed the steering handles and piloted towards the landing zone. Her touch down was a little rough, but not bad for a newbie. She flipped down her nightvision goggles and only then did she see her teammates near her gathering their shutes, which was Norma's next task. "Jumpin' in sure beats airports", Brent joked as he and Norma worked near each other. She sort of grunted in reply.

The parafoils were in their little bags and in a pile. The team had set up a perimeter, but hadn't seen any movement when the radios crackled. "Alpha team approaching at your 10 o'clock."

"Roger that", Steve acknowledged and a six man CIA Special Operations Group appeared out of the murky darkness. One of them walked over to Steve and extended his hand.

"Welcome to Pakistan", the man who identified himself as Brownlee said. Norma wasn't sure if that was his first name, his last name, or not even his name at all, but she wasn't going to ask.

"Some of my guys have been here before and some haven't", Steve said with a nod of his head.

The radio crackled again. "Charlie team at your six." This time Steve smiled broadly and turned around as a Seal team crested the hill. He walked right over to the leader.

"Shit Ron, I didn't know they let you out of your cage", Steve teased an old friend.

"Came to babysit you puke berets", Ron replied with a straight face.

"So what's on the menu", Steve asked after shaking Ron's hand. Everyone turned to Brownlee.

"I'll fill you in just as soon as the rest of our party arrives."

The words had barely left his mouth when the radio sounded again. "Overwatch approaching." Thirty-five Army Rangers joined the others atop of the hill. To Norma they looked like a whole army. She was used to working with and against relatively small units. If this mission included an augmented platoon from the 75^th Rangers then something big was the target.

"Ok, so let me tell you guys what's for dinner", Brownlee began once everyone was in place. "I know you guys heard about those ass stains that shot up Chicago the other day." There were nods all around. "Well we found the son of a bitch who ordered it, and we're going to cut the head off the goddamned snake."

Liv shifted on the divan, curling her skinny right leg under her body while never taking her eyes off of the technical manual Ansari had her reading. She had her back to her master, and while she looked like she was totally engrossed in the reading, she felt his eyes on her. There were times when Liv thought that her Master's blue-green eyes were the dreamiest things she'd ever seen, and other times that she'd have preferred that he had no eyes at all. She was in his doghouse now and while he always kept his cool, the other day he'd come about as close to hitting her out of anger as he ever had. She wouldn't have protested. She'd have deserved it. It was quite unnerving that he hadn't actually said anything directly about what she'd done in Iran, like he was waiting for the proper time to punish her.

At the moment Damteni was sitting in a chair in the other room looking out at Liv wondering if he was doing enough to teach her, to mold her properly. She was so powerful and so smart, with so much potential, but he couldn't trust her the way he did the others in the group. He'd sent Wen, Shu, Rico, and Liv's older brother Lars out on missions and they'd completed them flawlessly. Damteni couldn't trust Liv to complete an assignment properly when he was standing right next to her.

The other day in Iran his plan had been to put some fear into the smugglers, not to annihilate them. She'd done well in capturing Hassan, and the information he'd given Damteni was troubling. At least one of the Iranian smugglers had looked into the container. That simple action would push Damteni's timetable back by two weeks, maybe three. That was a disappointment for sure, but not something so upsetting that the proper response was wiping out a crew of useful smugglers. Good smugglers were exceedingly rare, but Liv's intellect always took a backseat to her lust for blood and death.

His young pupil loved to kill and destroy like a nymphomaniac loved sex. He often saw the look of lust in Liv's eyes before getting to kill and destroy. Getting shot before she'd fully changed was all the reason she'd needed. He could still see the fading red mark on her neck as she sat in the other room. They were the only evidence remaining as to what she'd done in Iran. It was amazing that she'd been able to wash all the blood off at all. Even her teeth had been red.

Once she'd started slaughtering people there was no reason to stop her. The stories any survivors would tell would be far more damaging than any of their weapons were. They could just barely slow Liv down at all, and they'd only managed to ruin his clothes. As powerful as Damteni was himself, and as powerful as his students were, the organization itself could only survive in secrecy. In the end, even though Damteni had been close to the leader of the group, he'd slaughtered people right alongside Liv. He hadn't done it with her glee, however. He knew what he was losing in this massacre. When all the men were dead, he'd snatched Liv out of the camp and led her towards the sea some a couple of miles away. She'd looked at Damteni like a child might look at a parent after the last ride was finished at an amusement park.

Liv was worried that Damteni was angry, but he was frustrated. He had tried every way he could think of to explain to Liv that killing, for someone as powerful as her should only be done when it would have a desired effect. She didn't seem to understand that. Perhaps she never would. The next person Liv spared would be the first. She didn't seem to want to think several steps ahead of her opponents. She was content to smash her way though problems.

On the surface Damteni didn't think that morality had anything to do with his position, but as he sat there he realized that maybe it did. He'd been raised in a good family with loving parents, with brothers and sisters who'd all cared for one another as siblings should. He knew how it felt to be loved, and to love, and to be utterly dependent on others for survival. He'd been a married man by the time he'd discovered his powers. Wen and Shu had been pre-teens. Ansari and Rico were teenagers when they'd discovered their abilities, but Liv had begun manifesting her powers when she was as young as three. Perhaps she'd never formed the sort of emotional connections that other people did.

It wasn't that Liv didn't have feelings. Damteni knew that she did, but he was beginning to wonder if she'd ever opened herself up enough to truly love someone. She cared for Lars, and wouldn't do anything to really hurt him, but was what she felt towards Lars true brotherly love or just some sort of sibling loyalty? There was no way to quantify that. Lars, for his part, had been six when he'd first used his powers. He remembered the day quite clearly, and during one of his sessions had told Ansari all about it.

It had been an afternoon, two weeks to the day before Liv's fifth birthday, and she was beating the family dog to death for stealing some food off of her plate. She'd been in a rage and the small child's blows were landing against the dog's body as hard as a grown man's. Their parents had been helpless to control her. Lars had felt helpless at first, but then he said that the energy had built up inside of him until he felt like he was going to burst. The first person he'd ever shot with his energy had been his little sister. Her small body had been knocked off of her feet and when she hit the floor, she'd slid all the way outside to the yard.

On another occasion Liv had told Ansari about the same incident. She said that she didn't hold any animosity towards her brother for shooting her even though it had hurt because she'd actually liked that dog. She just wished that he'd shot her sooner, so it might have lived.

A knock at the door brought Damteni's thoughts back to the moment. Liv jumped up to open it. Seven armed men in suits stood in the hall. Liv recognized the man at the front, and he recognized her. "Liv", he said with respect that the rest of his men didn't expect. "Davit", she replied then stepped aside so he and his men could enter.

"We are all prepared", Davit told Damteni in their native dialect of Georgian.

"Very well", Damteni said to Davit then looked to Liv. "Bring a change of clothes." She nodded curtly and hurried to her room.

"So she's coming with us, Master?", Davit asked with a tiny bit of alarm.

Damteni almost smiled. Davit and his men thought they were going with him to be a true security detail. Damteni didn't need someone to watch his back, but if there was ever a person to watch it, that person would be Liv. Whatever her failings, she was extremely loyal and hard working, but where they were going, a man's entourage was quite important. Liv might be able to kill people by the busload, but she didn't look the part.

Karim Azimi had to suppress his happiness at the success of the mission. He read the message Shah sent ahead and even the names of the dead didn't temper his joy. Amer was the only one of the dead that he knew well. Karim had fought alongside Amer's father against the Russians back in the old days. Karim would speak to him personally. All the families would be compensated though, compensated well. Dead or alive a man's role was to provide for his family. Even after reading the list of dead he smiled. Fighting a battle often cost lives, and this had been a big victory.

Very soon he'd be reunited with his property. It was a good feeling having his men go so many miles away and complete a mission. He'd sent his tablet to an expert in Tbilisi for study, but he only realized just how important the artifact was after it had been stolen. The experts said that the tablet was very old, and carved so expertly that even under intense magnification it wasn't possible to see tool marks. He said that the tablet actually had some sort of energy in it that affected magnetic waves, but he didn't know how or why. The study would continue. The last time Karim had sent his precious tablet to Tbilisi, but this time he'd bring the researchers to him. He'd set them up in an old royal palace about a mile up the ridge. They'd enjoy it there, and he'd make sure they had everything they wanted, and enough money to live like kings when they were finished.

He stood up and looked through the frosty windows and saw vehicles beginning to arrive. This great victory deserved to be celebrated and the guests were starting arrive. Karim broke out into a broad grin when he saw a sedan coming up the road. "Shah's returning", he told the servant standing outside the door. "Bring my coat!"

Norma wasn't sure what to make of the fact that she and the guys had parachuted into northern Pakistan just to hump it all the way into Afghanistan. They said that it had to do with being detected, but to Norma it just seemed silly. Brent told her to get used to that feeling. She moved along the assault team's right flank. The Rangers were up ahead scouting while the Seals had the rear. Norma couldn't believe that she was a part of something so big, and most of the guys around her couldn't believe that they were working with the SpecOps gal, as she'd come to be known in Special Forces circles. Before today Norma had been little more than a myth, like a yeti, but there was she was in the flesh, geared up and ready to fight. They'd heard that the SpecOps gal was muscular, but their imaginations hadn't been anywhere close to the truth. She was thickly, unbelievably muscled with broad, wide shoulders and even thicker arms with enough compressed sinews to bench press a Steinway, for reps. Her face wasn't covered in warpaint, but they couldn't see much of it either from behind the night vision glasses. All of it made men's heads spin, but when she had finally said a couple of words there was no doubt. That short super muscular soldiers was a woman.

The group was near their destination when Steve worked his way towards Norma. "Hey Carlton", he began after turning off the mic on his radio. "Brownlee just told me that we're meeting some PMC guys."

"Contractors? What for?"

"They've had eyes on the target location for over a year so they're going to give us the lay of the land. But I want you to keep the bottom of your hood up and don't say anything unless it's critical. The less those PMC guys know, the better. Understand?"

"Copy that, sir." Steve gave Norma a slap on her unyielding shoulder then returned to his spot in the formation.

At the rendezvous point in a forest on the side of a mountain the private military contractor guys came out from behind a huge fallen boulder looking like every single movie cliché of modern day mercenaries. Norma had to bite her lip to keep from giggling. Their rifle scopes were huge. Their weapons were so overloaded with gadgets that Norma was pretty sure they couldn't have held them steady for more than a few seconds. Their uniforms were so crisp that they looked like they'd just been picked up from the dry cleaners. Then the field briefing began, and as it turned out, Luke, the head PMC guy wasn't so bad. He'd been a Seal and wasn't nearly as corny as she'd first though. His intel was clear and concise and he sounded like he knew what was talking about. Norma had a good feeling about this mission despite the fact that it had so many moving parts, parts that hadn't worked together in the field before. It would have been better if they could have practiced this mission, but sometimes targets popped onto the radar screen unexpectedly. This was one of those times.

Liv's trip through northern Afghanistan hadn't been so bad. The flight to Kabul had been uneventful and the scenery here was ruggedly beautiful, charming even. She hadn't known what to expect and she certainly hadn't expected the roads in this remote part of the country to be as smooth as the motorväg back home. There was no way for her to know that the warlords kept these roads so pristine because it made for faster shipments of drugs and contraband.

She was looking out over an orchard when the Range Rover she was riding in turned suddenly. They were in a heavily wooded area now, going up progressively steeper and steeper grades. The security got tighter and tighter too. They passed through three checkpoints and a heavily fortified gate before turning onto the road that lead to Karim's retreat. Liv noticed plenty of vehicles parked near the building. Some were luxurious. Others were so battered she wondered how they were staying in one piece.

Karim came sweeping down the steps and greeted Damteni like he was a visiting dignitary. He embraced the big Georgian at the doorway in front of everybody. Even Liv knew that was high praise around here. Once inside the front door the group broke up. The important men took a single body guard and went to the top floor. Damteni chose Davit while the rest of the Georgians went to the second floor. Liv was politely shuttled to a somewhat spacious room on the third floor with the rest of the women. She hated being separated from her Master, but she understood how things were done in this part of the world. Davit was plenty capable, but it wasn't as if Damteni needed protection in the first place. Liv preferred to have a purpose though, and in this room she didn't have one at all.

She looked around quickly, using her eyes to scan rather than moving her head. She saw the food first, laid out on silver trays. Her stomach grumbled at the sight of it all. She wondered about the etiquette of the area when came to filling her face. It wasn't so much that she was worried about offending the people around her, but she certainly didn't want to embarrass her master. She chose to wait a moment, taking a seat near the door.

The rest of the women in the room were taking stock of her just as she was doing of them. There were some legitimate wives among this group, but most were concubines. Many of those girls had come from nearby areas. They'd been taken from their villages and given the 'honor' of sharing the bed of a powerful man. Liv couldn't imagine being so weak. They were little more than sex toys. She did realize though, that the rest of the woman thought the same thing of her. That idea made Liv chuckle as she looked around the room again.

She'd seen a few of her Master's conquests. He had needs like any other man, and none of those women had looked anything like her. Liv was fairly honest with herself and knew that she wasn't pretty in a traditional sense. She had no curves to speak of, and there was nothing striking or even memorable about her face. She was quite pale too, but not in the hauntingly alluring way her mother was, but in a recovering from an illness, shut-in sort of way. Her hair was always a bit thin and passively unruly even when she tried to groom it. Her front side was only slightly less flat than her backside. Her hands and feet were relatively large for a girl her size and probably the only real tells about her true nature. Her teeth were very nice and straight though, and she did appreciate that. Rico often joked that her teeth were her best feature, and she always offered to bite him. Then she would smile, which was a rare enough occasion most days.

This wasn't her true self anyway. This was little more than a disguise. The worst part of it all was that Liv's personality didn't change when her body did. The only difference was that she'd thrown off the burden of trying to fit in, trying to be normal when she was so full of raw, unstoppable power. She could feel it now, inside her, burning like a nuclear reactor. The people around her thought that she was weak, but she'd never allow herself to be anybody's sex toy. With that thought, she stood up and walked over to the food. It was time to eat.

Norma moved quietly through the underbrush, stepping carefully to avoid twigs or rustling leaves. Suddenly it was too late. She moved quickly despite her muscular bulk, grabbing the sentry's rifle with her right hand and wrapping her left arm around his neck. He pulled against her, trying to free himself and his weapon, but didn't have a chance. She hooked her arm around his comparatively squishy neck and flexed. Her peak of her biceps hit the side of his neck with enough force to disrupt the flow of blood in his carotid artery, but that was only the beginning. Her bicep nearly punched through the tough material of her uniform as she began to squeeze. The bones in his neck ground against each other until they cracked like eggs. The muscles and soft tissue were compressed into a formless paste. Norma jerked then, snapping his spinal cord like a dry rotted string. He was dead before Normal lowered him to the ground. She motioned to Mike who nodded and motion back. She put her hand back around the handle of her carbine and moved towards her next objective. Off to her left she saw the Rangers working their way forward. Another sentry died when he was stabbed through the heart and a third had his throat cut. More sentries were dead on the northern side of the compound. So far nobody had died yet on the western edge, but that was about to change.

Norma, Mike, and Brent got to their bellies and crawled to a ridge overlooking the Soviet era structure. Very soon their entire team was in place. The Seals were ready and so were the CIA men. The private contractors were in the far north back in the coordinating control area. They weren't supposed to get involved in the fighting, just to make sure everybody went to the proper places. "In position", the Rangers declared shortly. Norma exhaled and stood up with the rest of the team. The final assault was underway.

On the top floor Damteni sat comfortably, legs crossed drinking a glass of fine Southern Italian red from Karim's own cellar. Several men in the room abstained, but Damteni had always enjoyed a nice drink. He listened while Shah stood in the center of the room telling stories of his great mission into the heart of the American beast. Despite himself, Damteni found himself remembering his days in the military, when on occasion he'd been the man in the center of the circle telling stories. Those times had long passed even if the memories were sometimes fresh.

Shah spoke about the buildings that reached to the sky and the fine cars and about how he'd defied the mythical law enforcement of America to take back what rightly belonged to Karim. Most of the men had never been out of the region so they looked to Damteni. "Buildings that touch the sky?", Abbas Ghafani, a local warlord asked.

Damteni leaned forward in his chair. "I was in the city when they finished construction of the Sears building. I'd been all over the world, even back then, but I can tell you that I'd never seen anything like it. There was no tower to match it. Pictures do not begin to do it justice."

"See!", Shah yelled with a triumphant shout. "I would not boast idly about such things", he assured the assembled ears. He continued his story, this time telling them about the strange strong woman who had tried to stop he and his men. The men gasped at this part of the tale. Some of them speculated that this woman was some sort of government science experiment. Others thought that she was the product of some vile sorcery. Either way, that woman was an abomination. Damteni though made a mental note to gather information on the strong woman in Chicago.

After the main portion of Shah's tale was over, Damteni excused himself and politely walked out of the room. Davit moved to follow, but Damteni motioned for him to stay put. He didn't plan to be gone long. He made his way to the third floor and gave a message to one of Karim's men, who spoke to another, who spoke to the man who was guarding the women's room. It was a cumbersome chain, but Liv emerged quickly. She looked eager, like a child wanting to do something to make a parent forget something bad they'd done. Unfortunately for Liv, Damteni hadn't thought of a task that would make up for her actions in Iran. "Do you need anything here?", he asked.

"Yes", she replied quickly. "To get out." She gave a timid smile when she saw the corners of her master's lips curl up, slightly.

"We will more than likely spend a night here on this compound. There is a building about a hundred yards from here where you will sleep. I will see to it that you receive a private room and a comfortable bed."

Liv wanted to complain, but forced herself to say, "Thank you, Master." They parted ways and she headed into the room that felt like a prison cell. She wasn't talking to anyone and no one was talking to her. She was getting emotionally prepared to re-enter when suddenly the lights went out. Liv instinctively turned around to find her master, but her eyes weren't adjusted to the darkness. She heard some muffled gunshots only because she already knew what suppressed firearms sounded like. There was a thud somewhere above her. A door downstairs was blasted to pieces. There were more suppressed shots, and more thuds.

"Master!", Liv yelled as she stepped back towards the corridor. Suddenly she felt a hard hand on her shoulder. He pulled her to the floor not a second before the windows opposite them shattered and smoke grenades came rolling in. "We're under attack!", she yelled while covering her mouth and nose.

"No", Damteni said as if the air was clear. "Our host is under attack. This assault wasn't arranged on the off chance that you or I would be here. I can assume that this is a consequence of Mr. Azami's actions in the United States."

"Are we going to help him?", Liv asked, probing to see where her master's thoughts were.

"No", he said with emphasis. "The Americans can't know that we were here. They cannot link what happened in Iran to anything that happens here tonight. Do you understand?", he asked slowly, punctuating his question with a tight squeeze of Liv's spindly arm.

She winced a little, but knew that she deserved pain for what she'd done. "Completely", she answered after a cough.

"Good. Now you go downstairs and round up the rest of Davit's men before they engage the soldiers and get themselves killed. If Karim's men want to die, so be it. Take our men some place safe so they can wait this out. This is an old Soviet base and you know those well enough."

"What are you going to do, Master?"

"I've taken a keener interest in that tablet than before. I think I'll take it for myself and see why it's so special. Now go. The soldiers are moving quickly. You have to get to our men before the soldiers do."

Damteni moved to stay hidden, but was as calm as could be. Liv crawled towards the stairs trying to stay beneath the smoke and out of the sporadic gunfire she was hearing. These bullets wouldn't kill her, not even in this weak little form, but not revealing her powers was high on her priority list, so she had to deal with the burning lungs and the watering eyes. If she'd changed, Liv could have inhaled the smoke by the gallon. She made it to the stairway and heard an Afghan man calling to her.

"Stop!", he yelled in a tribal dialect that she didn't understand. She'd have kept going even if she did, but then he ran up and grabbed her by the arm. "You'll die down there. Get back to the room. I will protect you there", the nameless guard spilled quickly then began dragging Liv towards the room with all the women.

Liv looked back towards the man with the look of desperate courage on his face and a Kalashnikov in his hand. She'd seen him earlier standing guard over the women. She didn't know why he'd come out to get her, but Liv didn't have time to go backwards. Her other hand slid uselessly along the floor but then she grabbed onto a corner of the wall. She flexed her little muscles for all they were worth and managed to hang on long enough for the guard to lose his balance a bit. She snatched her hand from his and sprang to her feet. She pushed the man as hard as she could then ran down the stairs hoping that he wouldn't follow. He didn't.

On the second floor the guard was not as kind. She turned a corner, running in the dark. The teeth rattling noise of automatic gunfire and explosions were getting closer. Often long rips of gunfire by the Afghans was answered by short whip like shots by the Americans. Liv rounded another corner and slid to a sudden awkward stop when she came eye to eye with the barrel of a rifle. The man behind the rifle snarled then grabbed a handful of Liv's shirt and slammed the girl to the wall with one hand. "You are a spy!", he screamed, spit flying and froth gathering at the corners of mouth. "You and that big pale fool brought this attack on us!", Liv only understood part of what he said, but she understood his tone. He pulled back and slammed her even harder against the wall, banging her head into the stone. His finger curled on the trigger. Part of Liv wanted this man to see what would happen if he did pull that trigger, but she heard her master's voice in her ears just before the ringing after the gun had fired. She'd moved her head. Stone chips and plaster floated in the air while the man re-aimed and Liv opened her mouth. Rico would have been proud when she set her perfectly straight chompers on this man's arms and bit down as hard as she could.

He howled in pain and released her shirt. Liv spun to her right like a ballerina and was beside him. She put both of her hands on his shoulder to use as leverage as she jumped and smashed her bony knee into the center of his face. He staggered and she followed up with an elbow blast that she delivered after twisting up her whole body. A tooth loosened and blood ran down both sides of his mouth. He leaned away from her so she went down low, grabbing his leg behind his knee and pulling up with all the strength of wispy body could produce. He flailed his arms trying to keep balance, but failed. His rifle skittered across the polished stone floor and Liv went after it. She jumped over him and had just landed when the guard grabbed her ankle and snatched back. She smashed face first onto the floor. Now blood ran from her nose.

"You bitch", the man screamed as he regained his composure, but Liv was losing hers. She dug her nails into a joint between the stones on the floor and pulled forward so hard that she ripped three of them from the nail bed. She didn't even notice. She pulled herself forward just enough to get her right hand on the Kalashnikov. She spun quickly then. The man let her go, but it was too late. Three shots to his head opened it up like a melon. She dropped the gun and stood over the body long enough to wipe the blood from her nose, then she continued down the stairs.

If the upper floors were dark, the lowest level was as black as a cave. Liv had to feel her way, like she was blind. She heard someone off to her left and moved that way, but nothing was happening quickly now. It felt like it had taken her hours to move only a little distance. The front door had been breached so she tried to avoid it, moving towards a side door that opened to a terrace. Then Liv and Vano, one of Davit's men bumped into each other.

"Don't go that way", she said once she realized that it wasn't an Afghan.

"But Damteni is that way", Vano protested.

"He sent me to find all of you. We have to hide until the Americans are finished."

Vano blew out of his nostrils in frustration. "We all went to a service closet to get out of the initial attack. I went out to make it to the master while the rest of the men were to hold an escape route. I have to get Ioseb. He went that way." He pointed down a corridor.

"No", Liv said forcefully. "I'll find Ioseb. You make sure everybody else stays in that closet." She didn't wait for Vano to agree. She ran down the way she'd come, remembering turns as best she could. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but it was a slow process. The tongues of fire from distant gunshots looked like strobe lights now. "Ioseb", she called out in a loud whisper, hoping he would hear her, and he did.

"What are you doing down here?", he demanded. "You'll get yourself killed. You don't even have a gun!"

Liv took him by the arm and pushed him around a corner. "The Master wants you to go back to the service closet and hide. I already found Vano and he's rounding up the rest of the men."

"What about Damteni?"

"These are his orders", Liv said and waited for Ioseb's response.

"Okay, but I don't like it."

Ioseb insisted on being in the front as they made their way towards the closet. He was the one with the gun after all. Liv wouldn't have thought it, but she actually felt some sort of appreciation that this man was willing to put himself in danger to protect her. It was completely unnecessary, but for some reason she appreciated it just the same. He slowed when they came to a corner. They had to pass a doorway and he was cautious. "Okay. It's clear", Ioseb said and sprinted across the open space with Liv behind him. He was fast and her little legs could only move so quickly, not quickly enough. The door exploded inward, the pressure wave knocked Liv back against a wall and Ioseb forward. He stopped and turned to go back, but Liv was on her knees now. He wanted to go back and get her, but she mouthed, "Hide", and he slid behind a table. Liv turned away and started crawling the opposite direction just as heavily armed soldiers came rushing in, moving with extreme precision.

"No!!! Please!!! Don't shoot me!!!", Liv screamed in her native Swedish and rolled onto the floor with her hands held up high.

"Contact right!", Steve said into the comm, and five M-4 carbines pointed at Liv's head. "Non-com", he said and motioned for Norma to step forward. "Restrain and continue."

"Don't resist", Brent said in surprisingly good Swedish. "We're not here to hurt you."

Liv didn't fight back as a soldier with big muscles and surprisingly small hands rolled her face down and zip-tied her hands behind her back. The entire episode took less than ten seconds then the Americans disappeared into the darkness. She'd rolled to a sitting position by the time Ioseb came up to her with his knife drawn. "That was good acting", he said and cut her loose.

"I couldn't let them see you. Now come on, we have to get to the others."

"This way", Ioseb said and ran.

Norma kept her breathing normal and even while her heart was racing. There was danger around each corner and curve. The skinny Swedish girl had been the only easy part so far. The Afghans fought for each hall and passageway. The Seals had come in through the windows on the third floor, but they were bogged down with enemies barricaded at the stairwell. The CIA team had come in through the back to find out that the Afghan defenders had actually destroyed the rear stairs and they'd have to find another way up. It only got worse when the Rangers outside radioed that there were at least three truckloads of men approaching the compound. The words had barely escaped the Ranger captain's mouth before there was a fiery explosion outside when a shoulder fired rocket hit fuel storage drums. Steve didn't say that this mission had to kick into high gear. All the Green Berets already knew it.

Damteni felt the explosion from outside as the Rangers engaged the reinforcements. Some of those were Karim's men, but there most of the forces converging on the retreat belonged to the other warlords up here on the top floor. Damteni wondered if the Americans knew that they were attacking a warlord convention. Probably not, he figured. If they had, they'd have dropped a bomb on this place. Then he realized that they still might.

Karim felt like a rabbit in a snare. He held onto the tablet, clutching it to his chest with both hands. He caught a reflection of himself in the nickel plated slide of Abbas Ghafani's Colt, and felt like a fool, like an old woman clutching some sentimental keepsake. He put the tablet back inside the padded case and then slid the case behind a chair. "Hand me a weapon", he declared as the sounds of battle got closer. If these were going to be his last moments, he was going to live them as the soldier he used to be. Damteni thought better of the man for it although he made no move to join the battle.

Damteni crouched in a corner with Davit crouched behind him. He had three goals: get the tablet, protect Davit from death, and don't allow the Americans to know that a gifted person had ever been there. He'd worked out how to do the first two items on his list, but not without violating the last one. He brainstormed until he saw some movement off to his left. Even in all the chaos a potted plant remained upright and undamaged. He saw the branches of that plant start to shake and bend like they were catching a breeze. He maneuvered to get a better look.

Liv was relieved once all the people she was supposed to protect were together. She peeped around a corner and pulled back. "Let's move", she ordered and took a step out past the wall, only no one went with her.

"The battle's going on upstairs and outside. We're safe right here until it ends", Lado, another of Davit's men spoke for the group.

"Safe until the Americans sweep the building and find you. The master doesn't want them to know that any of us were ever here."

"You think we'll talk if we are found? You think we'd tell them about him?", Lado seemed insulted at the insinuation.

Liv turned to face him realizing that he wasn't the smartest man in the group. Her voice was calm, but her eyes betrayed her frustration. "I think the Americans wouldn't need you to talk. I think they'd put your face in some database and match it to some other guy who would match some other guy who would eventually lead to our Master.

"Then we would fight them!"

"And you would die, humbly and quickly. Then they would get the information they needed anyway. They don't need a live person to use your face or your fingerprints, just your dead body." She paused and looked each man in the eye. "None of that might matter anyway. Knowing the Americans, when they're finished here, they'll just flatten this place."

Norma was just behind Mike and in front of Brent when they rounded a corner and machine-guns opened up on them, sending bullets cracking and zipping past their heads. "Fuck. Fuck", Mike exclaimed after whipping his head to the backside of the wall. He felt the bullets impacting the stone wall, chipping through it. He pointed to Norma. "Get to the underside of those steps! Go on the hammer's fall." Norma and Brent nodded and took position. Brent and Mike pulled their triggers sending dozens of bullets towards the Afghan defenders. Norma ran across the hall sliding on spent shell casings and recently melted lead. It seemed to take an hour to get to the far wall, but she got there. She looked up as Brent and Mike went back behind cover. She was below and behind the gunners on the stairs, and they didn't even see her. The Afghans had put steel plates against the steel railings to shield themselves from bullets, but they hadn't counted on Norma. She rose high on her toes and laced the fingers of her left hand through the railings while keeping her carbine ready in the other hand. She tightened her grip and snatched back with adrenaline fueled power. Bolts set deep into stone and concrete were sheared. The couple of bolts that survived simply bent under the increasing pull of the steel and Norma's muscles. She didn't even duck as a couple hundred pounds of steel came falling down around her. Norma put her arm up to shield her eyes while she took aim and shot a man in the center of his chest. Two more shots came from across the hall. Norma pulled the trigger again hitting the machine-gunner in the hand. He twitched from the pain and Brent put a bullet right through his ear. Mike and Brent joined Norma on the stairs and up they went.

This time Liv made sure she was in the front of the column of men. The Georgians followed Liv because her words were backed by Damteni and not by anything at all they'd witnessed about this wispy little girl. They had their guns drawn as they moved towards the southern side of the house. Liv put her hand back and touched Vano's chest. He reached back and touched all the other men silently relaying the order to stop. Liv moved out from the group towards a group of soldiers guarding a door by staring at it and hoping intently that no soldiers tried to come through it.

Vano peeked around the corner wondering why Liv didn't let them just shoot the two guys in the back and move on, but as she tiptoed back around the corner she held up seven fingers. Liv was almost shaking with tension. She could kill these men in a manner of seconds, but her master had forbidden her method so she held out her hand and asked for a gun. Ioseb pulled out a spare and gave it to her. The group moved more fluidly now. Not as good as the soldiers Liv had seen earlier, but good enough. She tucked the gun behind her back and walked ahead of the group. Her expression went from one of anxious control to that of a scared teenager.

"Help me!", she yelled in Swedish and all the heads turned. The Afghans recognized her as the girl who'd been with Karim's big guest. One of them leveled a gun at her head and other one aimed his at her chest. Their leader hadn't given them an order yet, but Liv's were already given. As she swung her arm around, the Georgians came partially into view their guns already up and ready. Vano shot his pistol and the others were only milliseconds behind him, putting slugs into the men. Liv fired one shot at the center of a man's forehead then jumped over the hastily prepared barriers the men had erected and shot a wounded man in the chest putting him out of his agony. She checked the door for explosives then opened it. She motioned for the Georgians to join her. They were about halfway there when she heard a noise to her left. Her heart raced when she realized that she and the Georgians had only killed six men.

She raised the borrowed gun and stepped around a barrier to see boy on the ground looking up at her. He was younger than she, with just wisps of hair making up his 'beard'. The fear in his eyes was as real as anything Liv had ever seen. "No don't shoot", he said in broken English. "Take me with. I don't want to die."

"Fuck this", Vano said in Georgian and raised his gun but Liv gently pushed his arm down then handed him his gun. "He can be useful. Bring him with us." This was crazy. The Georgians had no idea why Damteni would use a girl like this. She was getting sentimental at all the wrong times.

The wall behind the plant shook then slid open slowly. Two gun barrels poked out of the dark space then three men ran out between them and set up a perimeter. The original two men came out and extended their little semi-circle out another ten feet. Once that was in place Damteni saw another man come out. All these soldiers had clean uniforms and rifles with plenty of gadgets hanging from the sides. Damteni didn't see the flag on their shoulder right away. It was hidden under a flap. He exhaled when he saw a patch on that flap. Just then Abbas Ghafani saw the movement.

He swung his AK-47 around, but smiled instead of firing. "Luke!", he called out. "Have you come to rescue us", he asked coming over and slapping his acquaintance on the shoulder.

"What's the situation?", Luke asked in excellent Pashtu.

"The soldiers are advancing on us up the stairs", Abbas reported then motioned for his bodyguard to get Karim's attention.

"Who the hell are these men!?!", Karim shouted.

Abbas tried to calm him. "These are the men I've worked with. They have helped move your product and mine. These are my American partners. They are one of the reasons that not one of my trucks has ever been caught with contraband."

"So what are you doing here now?"

"They have come to rescue us, Karim. To get us out of this grave we have put ourselves in." Karim wasn't sure of this man's intentions, but he also knew that he had no good alternatives.

Mike, Brent, and Norma met up with the other half of the team and fought towards the south side of the third floor. The SOG. team from the CIA was pinned down and so were the Seals who were trying to relieve the pressure on them. Steve wished there were windows on the top floor, but the steps were the only way up. Brownlee was thinking the same thing. Capturing Karim might no longer be a viable option. "Put some frags up there." Two soldiers gladly pulled grenades and tossed them up and over the heads of the Afghans closest to them. The fuses cooked off before anyone could move out of the way.

"Go go go!", Brownlee yelled. Steve and Ron echoed the order and the soldiers charged up the steps.

Norma didn't think as she ran. Fear felt like needles jabbed into her neck, but she pushed through the sensation. Ron killed a man to the left and Brownlee blew a hole in one man's chest. "Frag out!", somebody yelled and Norma moved behind a corner. The blast shook her teeth, but she kept going forward. A man jumped from behind an overturned table and yelled "Glory to God!", just before Norma put five bullets in his chest. Mike nodded and the group moved on. Everything was a blur. They went room by room. Norma would kick a door off of its hinges. Mike and Brent went in and cleared. The first room held two men, both died quickly. The next two rooms were empty.

"They're getting closer", Abbas yelled. The floor shook when an explosion went off somewhere down the hall.

Damteni had moved from the corner towards the untouched chair that hid the tablet. With a move that qualified as sleight of hand, he grabbed the case and motioned for Davit to follow him.

"We can't go out the way we came in", Luke explained. "That way is crawling with American soldiers, we're making a new way. Follow me!"

Damteni didn't go with the others. He went towards the potted plant. He pushed Davit into the opening a split second before he joined him in the darkness. He was still peering out when he saw Karim and Abbas and all the other going in the other direction. Suddenly Luke dove to his left and his men opened fire. Ten bullets hit Abbas before he could even scream. Karim caught a bullet to the chest and cheek before dropping to his knees. Luke rolled to a sitting position and leveled his rifle at Karim's head and pulled the trigger. The other warlords and their bodyguards died too. It was over in a matter of seconds. Luke was on his feet now. "Close that fucking wall and make the hole look right", he ordered his men. Damteni urged Davit to hurry down the steps as one of Luke's private contractors reached into the opening and pulled closed the old Russian secret passage. Damteni reached into his pocket and pulled out a vintage Ronson and lead Davit down the passage way. They hadn't gone fifty feet when they were shaken by a huge explosion.

"What the fuck was that?", Steve asked Ron who looked over at Brownlee.

"Beats the hell out of me", the CIA man replied. "But there's only one way to find out." The group pushed ahead. The guards fought with ever increasing ferocity as the soldiers pushed forward, towards a closed door at the end of the hall. The target had to be back there. Some Afghans had barricaded themselves in front of it. Brownlee reached to his vest to pull a grenade when suddenly the door behind those men opened and shots rang out. Through the smoke and dust and atomized blood Steve made out three of the military contractors. "Clear!", they yelled when the three men behind the barricades were killed. Steve stood up with Ron and Brownlee flanking him. The three looked like they'd witnessed both a miracle and a tragedy.

Norma stayed close and in a combat mindset as she followed about ten feet back as Luke showed the groups the end of this battle. He didn't seem like he wanted a pat on the back, but he did seem fairly pleased with himself. He even seemed a little remorseful when he revealed the slaughter near the eastern side of the top floor. Their target, Karim Azimi was dead in a puddle of his own blood as were at least a dozen other men. Off to the side of the room two of Luke's men were trying to salvage papers from a fire.

"It seems that they were trying to destroy stuff before we came in."

"Who were they trying to protect?", Brownlee wondered and started looking around.

Ron took his tactical helmet off and looked around too. His bald chocolate colored head dripped with sweat and his eyes were red from the smoke. He pulled a rag from his back pocket and mopped his head and face dry before sliding his helmet back on and looking to Luke. "How'd you get up here?"

"Let me show you", Luke said, the pride returning. He led the soldiers to a breach in the floor near a radiator. Luke explained how they'd had to be careful to blast the floor in the right place so the radiator heating fluid wouldn't rupture. They needed the pipes intact so they could climb up them and up to the top floor. They'd just gotten to the top when they encountered Karim and his men. That's when the slaughter had happened. "Nice work", Brownlee said, but his tone didn't.

Just then there was an explosion about two hundred yards from the building. "More trucks approaching", the Rangers reported in calm voices.

"Copy that", Brownlee said. "Talon to Rainbow Brite."

"Rainbow Brite?", Norma whispered to Mike with a big smile hidden behind her mask.

"He's a fucking legend. I'll explain later", he whispered back. Norma nodded and walked off so no one would hear her laugh.

"You've got the Rainbow", a gruff voice said over the comm.

"Send in Spooky."

"Roger. Spooky is on the way."

Liv and her convoy moved in quick bursts from car to van to truck to rusted tank to half destroyed armored personnel carrier that had been left by the Soviets when they'd pulled out years ago. Liv kept the battle raging to her right so she knew that they were heading in the proper direction. They'd just finished a fifty yard run when Liv heard something in the distance. She tried to filter out the sounds of the Rangers battling the Afghans. In a moment she didn't have to. Her eyes were a little elevated when it looked to her like the sky itself had burst into flames.

"My God", Lado breathed as flames rained down from the sky like something from the Old Testament. Explosions shook the ground as continuous tracts of tracers hit and ricocheted against the ground like the sparks from molten metal. The Afghan AK-47s fell silent and only the M-4s of the Americans sounded.

"Fuck me", Ioseb whispered, looking to Liv as if she had the answer to some question that he wasn't even quite sure how to ask. Luckily for him she did.

She moved back down the line to the Afghan boy. "What's your name?", she asked in her rudimentary Pashtu.

"Zarin", he managed to say though his mouth was cotton dry.

"Okay, Zarin. Run that way", Liv ordered and pointed to the direction that the American AC-130 had just devastated. He shook his head in abject terror. Liv held out her hand in front of Ioseb's face and he immediately put a pistol in it. "Go or die." Zarin stood up and started walking away. He looked over his shoulder and saw Liv still pointing the gun at him. His walk became a trot and then a sprint. He'd just about gotten to the treeline when the sky opened up again. The airplane was invisible in the night sky, but the bullets coming from its cannons looked like lasers, homing in on poor Zarin and the other Afghans near him. "Let's move!", she shouted and sprinted as fast as she could towards her real goal.

Everyone was breathing heavily when they finally took refuge next to the rusted hulk of a T-55 tank. The cold steel felt reassuring to the Georgians, but in reality they knew that the bullets from that unseen gunship could punch through the old armor like it wasn't even there. They weren't going to have to say there long though.

Liv moved away from the tank towards an outcropping of rock, and motioned for the rest to stay put while she squeezed her slender body between the hulks and decaying debris, finally approaching the rock face. She started searching frantically, darting from the left side of side of the hill to the right, looking high and low before the men saw her sigh. They didn't know if it was from relief or from failure. The gunship circling above them opened up on the Afghans with its howitzer cannon. Vano could only shake his head while the rest of the men just stared. That damned thing had a tank gun inside it. They didn't turn their heads again until they felt a blast of heat.

They turned back to see Liv, naked, facing away from them. Her body had already began to change. Her body had doubled in size by the time it got hot enough for them to feel, and it was still growing. Striated muscles pumped up all over her body from some unseen place. Her legs and back, ass, shoulders, and arms were getting as big as any female bodybuilding the guys had seen. She passed that by quickly. She was getting taller too as her bones themselves changed to accommodate her new muscles. Her body was still growing when she jammed her hand high near the overhanging stone and her body flexed hard. The growth was one thing, but this new expansion of her naked body was something different.

The fires from the battle highlighted her body with flickering flashes of orange and white. The growth continued and the muscle expanding flex continued too. They couldn't see her front, but they saw her arms stretched high over her head and inhuman knotting of her ass. They saw her entire torso expand as she sucked in pounds of air into her suddenly huge lungs. Then her muscles flexed for real. The Georgians knew that all of this flexing wasn't for show. She was trying to do something, and then something cracked.

The front of the outcropping actually moved. They couldn't see the strain on Liv's face. It was flushed and scrunched tight as she continued to grow bigger and thankfully, stronger. Her fingers slid in deeper to some gap that the men behind her couldn't see. Liv paused, took another breath, then pulled her right hand back and put it flat against the ceiling of overhanging rock. Then with a sound half grunt and half erotic moan Liv began separating her arms, holding her right arm steady against the ceiling while pulling down with just her left arm. The front of the entire hill began to move. Her body didn't smoke like earlier in the cold air. It just steamed. She was covered in sweat. The men could see the tension of the moment plain on Liv's new body. Her muscles were knotted now in some sort of perpetual flex. It was as if Liv's muscles had reached their maximum, but she kept demanding more.

Sweat dripped from the tips of Liv's hair as her head vibrated with strain. This door was made to stand tank shells, artillery fire, bombs, and maybe even thieves. She could feel the care the engineers and builders had put into this hidden chamber's construction, but it wasn't going to be enough to keep Liv out. Normally she would have loved every second of using her muscles like this. She'd have been as wet as an ocean. Her girl juices would have flooded down her leg and melted the ice at her feet, but now all she thought of was the American plane circling over the battlefield. If any diligent airman looked at the thermal sensor screen, at the right time, he'd see a massive unexplainable hot spot. Liv wanted to avoid that with every fiber of her being, so she pushed her body hard, harder than any time in her recent memory. She was rewarded.

The door itself shook. Pieces of concrete and stone façade fell to the ground, then there was an explosion beneath the ground. It shook everything near her, but then the door began to move. The hydraulic rams that operated the door were no match for Liv's arms. They were thick with muscles, overstuffed with ripe busting sinews as she muscled down this Cold War relic. The Georgians felt like spectators at some odd sporting event, rooting for Liv's success. Then they saw what was behind the door she'd worked so hard to open, another door.

When Liv's left arm was straight, the door was still only halfway into the ground. She lifted her leg and put her foot on the thick top. Her hamstrings and calves flexed now. The muscles on her plant leg flexed a million times a second to maintain her balance with the tremendous forces she was under. She set her teeth on edge and forced her leg down. Her ass muscles exploded now as she forced this heavy door into the ground only she didn't push it all the way down.

With a mix of effort and pain on her face she put her head under the outcropping. She took another breath, readying herself as she removed her right arm from the stone. The full weight of the hydraulic system tried to make the door rise. Her feet and thick hard calves flexed to keep it right where she wanted it. Even from the back, the flare of her straining quads was epic and her core muscles were insane. Her lats and traps looked monstrous even on her massive frame. Veins and tendons stood out on her neck as all of that power funneled up her body to her neck which had to hold everything while she worked with her hands. It felt like two or three herds of elephants were dancing across her skull, but failure was not an option.

"Securing the site", the Rangers reported after some fighting and a few passes of the AC-130.

"Copy that", Brownlee said with some relief. "Widen the arcs and sweep the area."

"Roger that, sir", the Spooky's pilot acknowledge and flew the plane in ever widening circles. It hadn't even made a full pass when it opened fire again, pumping hundreds of rounds onto some target that the Georgians couldn't see. They could see one thing though. The plane was getting closer. Liv saw it too.

The second door was segmented, meant to open section by section. That didn't mean that it was easy. Liv was desperate though. The plane was almost over head. She screamed and pulled against this door. The American plane fired its big howitzer cannon. The Georgians clutched their weapons because mixed in with the booming explosions they heard gunshots from M4 carbines getting closer, so close they could hear their garbled voices. Liv heard them too. Her mouth opened in a silent scream and her muscles bulged like over ripened fruit. Blood vessels were so thick they looked ready to burst open. Blood ran from her fingers and tears ran from her frantic eyes as the Americans got closer. The explosions were moving steadily towards them. Liv pulled with everything she had. With superhuman effort Liv wrenched the door open two inches then four then ten. She turned her eyes in her head and made out the Rangers clearly. Her already racing heart raced to hyperspeed when she saw one of the soldiers point towards the rusted tanks and armored personnel carriers. With the last bit of strength she could muster, she pulled the door open about a foot and a half.

She was trying to, but didn't have to motion to the Georgians. They were already moving. They ran past her into the dark, dank, unknown place. "Hurry", she hissed in a bigger, deeper voice than before. Man after man squeezed through the opening that only Liv's determination managed to keep open. She counted the Georgians as they rushed past. Four... five... six. She twisted her body, putting her back against flat side of the doorway putting both her hands against the inner door while letting the outer door begin to rise. She bench pressed the massive resistance from the door and was about to squeeze into the opening when suddenly someone dove between her legs and her arms. She slipped into the space a second later. The doors slammed closed. Vano turned on a small flashlight. A panting Liv looked down to see Zarin breathing just as heavily as she was. Fright still covered his face like the blood from a cut to the side of his head. The Georgians aimed their guns, and Liv laughed. It was a deep hearty laugh that echoed off the walls.

"Let him live, guys. He earned it, don't you think?"

Norma walked back up the stairs to the fourth floor after helping clear the rest of the building. They hadn't found anymore resistance. Mike had been able to talk the Afghans guarding some women to surrender. The men had been placed under arrest, and the women had been separate awaiting transport. The helicopters would be here soon to pick them all up. Some of the women were crying, and while Norma didn't understand much Pashtu, she could recognize names. They were calling out for loved ones. She didn't want to hear that so she went up to the fourth floor. Maybe one day she'd become desensitized to the death and sorrow, but hopefully not. "War's supposed to suck", she whispered and looked through the door where the private contractors seemed to be sorting through things they'd pulled from the fire.

She had no reason to go inside, but ended up standing next to the now smoldering fireplace anyway. She stood there looking at the PMC guys piecing together scorched paperwork, moving fragments from one place to another trying to figure out where they fit. Norma could have helped. Instead she just stood there looking around. She looked down into the fireplace, twisting up her little freckled nose and squinting her eyes. She saw some pieces of paper laying beneath an ashen ember that hadn't fully burned. She used her boot and moved a piece of wood then bent down and scooped the pieces up. She thought about telling the pmc guys that they'd missed something, but she didn't. She couldn't put words to what she was feeling, but something was off. She put the pieces of paper in one of the many pockets on her uniform and walked away.

Liv used Vano's flashlight to search the dusty old place for a few minutes before returning to the group near the door. "We're secure in here", she announced and leaned against the wall, tired.

"What is this place?"

"It's a nuclear weapons storage bunker", she replied after cleaning off a spot to sit her massive body on the floor. Her muscles were stilled pumped from their workout, and even she needed some time to recover.

"What?!?"

"The Soviets always put one of these in their major bases even if they never actually put nuclear weapons in the bunker", Liv explained.

"So you broke into a damned nuclear bunker!!!", Ioseb screamed. "No wonder the Damteni put you in charge." Liv smiled, more at being able to complete her master's orders than at the compliment, although that was nice too.

"And I was worried that you'd hurt yourself while we running from room to room during the battle in the house", Bera, the youngest of the Georgians said. "You could have just told us that you had the ability to turn into a muscled giant. It would have lowered our stress, believe me."

Liv chuckled. "We had to get out of the house first."

Zarin looked around too. "I worked here for long time", he managed to say in English. "I never seen this place."

"It was made to be hidden. Only a small number of people knew about them, even when this base was in Soviet hands."

"So how did you know about it?", Isoeb asked, and all eyes turned to Liv and her partially illuminated face.

"When I first joined the Master, we were based on an old Soviet installation in Moldova. Part of my training used to involve breaking into the bunker there. This one is in much better shape though, and probably a newer design." She looked down at her naked torso and down her outstretched legs seeing that her pump was finally starting to go away. She finally felt almost normal. She looked up then as a thought just occurred to her. "Hey, did any of you guys happen to pick up my clothes?"

Outside, a fleet of Blackhawk helicopters showed up about an hour before dawn. All the captured enemy prisoners were loaded onto a couple of choppers. The women were put on another couple and the rest were for the various Special Ops teams. Norma was standing off by herself, the ashy pieces of paper still in her pockets. She could have simply returned to the base without saying a word, but that wasn't Norma's style. She found Steve and they walked off from the others.

"I took these from the room with the burned documents", she confessed and pulled out her cache. "Those guys weren't even looking closely. These pieces are pretty big."

"That's CIA territory Carlton. We weren't tasked with collection."

"I know, sir, but look at this." She shined her light down where he could see without the aid of night vision. "This isn't regular paper. Here see. That looks like a watermark. I can't tell from what, but I've seen a lot paper work over the last few months, sir, and this is important."

Steve sighed. "Then put the stuff back in your pocket Specialist. And I think we shouldn't talk about. Give it all to your friend Howell, and tell him not to say where he got it from. Understand?"

"Perfectly", Norma replied earnestly before Steve walked away.

Norma was on a Blackhawk flying away from the site of her latest combat before she finally pulled her hood off and ran her fingers through her damp hair. Brownlee's face was expressionless as he sat just behind the pilots. It had been his job to collect and categorize the intel, but he'd relied on the contractors too much, and Norma didn't trust those guys. Brownlee looked down at his watch then picked up a headset. "Talon to Rainbow Brite." This time everyone saw Norma's smile. Brownlee ignored it. He figured that she could meet Rainbow in person and see if she'd smile.

"Rainbow here, go ahead", the gruff voice said immediately.

"Commence lighting ceremony."

"Roger that, Talon."

The group in the old nuclear bunker couldn't hear much from beneath layers of concrete, steel, and stone, but the afterburners of the B-1 Lancer were legendarily loud and they heard them as the plane powered up to gain speed. "Put your heads down!", Liv yelled in the instant before 50,000 pounds of bombs shook the ground like an earthquake. The flashlight fell from Vano's hands and rattled along the shaking floor casting light on stunned faces until the rumbling subsided. Silence filled the space until someone finally took a breath. No one had to say that Liv was right, but she was. The Americans had flattened the place.

An hour later there was a loud scraping sound at the big front door. Everyone jumped to their feet. "Around that corner", Liv ordered and everyone moved quickly. Any hesitation at following her orders was long gone. She prepared herself to do what had to be done to protect the men her master had put her in charge of even if that meant breaking his first rule. But if the Americans were opening that door it meant that they already knew that she was there. She heard some mechanicals start wining as pulleys turned and seized gears began to spin. Liv snorted like a bull. They must have found some sort of switch to open the outer door. She bent her knees a little and rose onto the balls of her feet. The inner door was slow in opening, but then a shaft of sharp sunlight pierced the darkness all the way to the far wall. She heard a man grunt. The door opened some more. Liv wanted to stay calm like Wen and Shu did in a fight, but her heart raced with anticipation. Her muscles radiated with tension. She was ready for anything, except for seeing her master's face.

She rushed over and added her strength to the effort opening the inner door. She knew how hard that had been. The outer door seemed to have opened on its own, but the inner door was being a bear. She saw Davit then, standing unharmed holding a gun and her clothes. He stared openly for a moment. He'd seen Liv in action once over a year earlier, but he hadn't been this close. He'd never seen her muscles bulging right in front of him like this. It was erotic and intimidating. He snapped himself from his trance when Liv looked directly at him. He rushed past the tangle of arms into the bunker feeling around the wall. They heard the shifting of counterweights deep below the floor and the stress of holding open the blast door went away. The door opened up halfway on its own.

People squinted in the bright light of the sun taking in the devastation. The tank hulks had been tossed around like discarded toys and not a single building was left standing. Smoke rose from the dozens of craters created by the bombs and smoldering flames still licked at the trees in the distance. The Georgians were excited to see that Damteni and their leader Davit had survived unharmed. They were destracted by Liv's body though. In the darkness they'd been forced to make assumptions about what she actually looked like in her full glory. They'd all been wrong. Their brains had said that no one could be as big and powerful looking as that, but she was. Standing several inches taller than any of the Georgians and as wide across the shoulders as two of them combined, her body still managed to look athletic rather than overstuffed. She was powerful like a tiger, strong and predatory. Her eyes were the same, but her face was a little different, more hawkish and predatory too. Her muscles though were overwhelming to anyone who hadn't seen them before.

"You left these", Davit said, standing eye to chest with the muscled beast.

"I assure you we were in a hurry", she said and went around the corner. The Georgians felt the same heat from before and in less than a minute the spindly girl from before had returned. Zarin nearly fainted. The whole time he hadn't realized that the monstrous muscle woman was the same one who had threatened him earlier.

"Who is this?", Damteni asked once they'd left the bunker.

"Zarin's his name", Liv informed her Master. "I sent him on a suicide mission yesterday to provide cover for us and he managed to survive. I was wondering if you might be able to find a use for him."

Damteni looked back to Zarin who was being escorted by Davit's men towards the road, then down to Liv. "Excellent job. I'm proud of you", he said, and Liv was so thrilled she couldn't stop smiling.

Norma had barely traveled back to Poland when she did exactly what Steve had suggested. She was surprised though when Sebastian hadn't immediately jumped to look at the things she'd brought from Afghanistan. He didn't think that they would have anything to do with what he was working on, and he wondered why they weren't being delivered through official channels. It turned out that he'd known Brownlee for some time and thought well of the man's skills. The information that had come through official channels had been useless so why should these scraps of paper be any different.

"You weren't there", Norma stated strongly. "The CIA guys were all trying to id the dead guys back at the blood bath in the hallway and the private contractors were gathering the paperwork. Your friend Brownlee only came in once they told him that they'd gotten everything that could be useful. He signed off on the whole thing then went out to help direct the gunship. They were still mopping up outside. Look, my point is that Brownlee was Grade A from what I saw, but he was relying on those PMC guys and they were fuckin' sketchy at best."

"So what are you saying, that the contractors didn't want you to find these scraps or that they simply missed them?"

"Does that matter? All that matters is that I picked them up. If I hadn't they'd be lost forever because the Air Forced used that place as target practice after we left."

Sebastian sighed. "They wanted to make sure it couldn't be used as a base by the enemy again."

"Damn it, I know that! I may be new to soldiering, but I'm not stupid." She took a breath to calm herself. "You know, before I met you I wouldn't have given a damn about some pieces of half burned paper, but I saw that they weren't like the others. They hadn't been printed on a fuckin' inkjet. I saw watermarks and raised letters. Look, I've gone out of my way to help you. And you know what, while I've been working with you, I might have learned a thing or two. Something drew me to these scraps and I think it's all the spy, intelligence analyst bullshit that you've filled my head with. But if you don't trust that I might be able to find something interesting, you don't have to waste my time anymore. This is your job. I've already got one, remember?"

"Alright. Set the items there on my desk, Specialist. I promise I will give them a thorough going over", Sebastian agreed. He'd begun to think of Norma as a friend and he didn't want her getting upset with him over something as silly as this. She put the items down then quickly left.

ten hours later…

A sharp knock on the door awoke Norma with a startled jump. She reached for where her rifle would be if she was sleeping during a mission, but she just grabbed air. As fast as that, she realized that she was on base, in her room, in her bed. She wiped her eyes and rolled to put her feet on the cold concrete floor. That woke her up quite a bit. She was still wiping her eyes when she opened the door and looked up to see a smiling Sebastian standing there, resplendent in one of his many bespoke suits.

"Sorry to wake you, Specialist, but this couldn't wait. May I come in?", he asked politely and Norma simply moved out of the way and found her way to a chair.

"Do you want to sit down?", Norma asked, remembering her manners.

"No, this shouldn't take long", he began then inhaled deeply. "I owe you an apology. A big one. In my defense, I think you caught me at a moment of intellectual weakness, but you were correct and I was mistaken. I looked through the items and one of them stuck out as a piece of a passport, a newer one. There was some fragment of an identification number remaining so I sent what you brought me back to the wizards in London to see if they could find out if someone with a passport containing those numbers had reported one as missing."

"Well did they?"

"Something better… or worse depending entirely on your perspective. They found a missing child report for a Mathias Ekholm, Danish citizen aged eleven."

"I feel sorry for the boy's family, but why's this got you so excited? I mean you have that look you get when you think you've figured something out."

"What look?", Sebastian fired back. "I don't have a look."

Norma chuckled. "Anyway..."

"Yes, anyway, young Mathias was reported missing by his parents on 8 December of this past year from just outside of Riga, Latvia."

"Well I'll be."

"Yes, my reaction exactly. You found the passport of a boy who went missing about the same time as our mysterious cargo appeared, and in the same place as we believe the cargo originated. I can't say for sure if young Mathias is the only person being moved inside of a shipping container with holes drilled out of the top, but I can say that he's at least one of the people who is being moved."

"Puts a name and a face with our search I guess."

"It's more than that, Specialist. Why would smugglers who normally move arms for the Taliban and al qaeda suddenly clear their schedules so they can move an eleven year old Danish boy? And how in the world did this young boy's passport end up in Afghanistan?

"All good questions. Any ideas for answers?"

"Not at present. That's why I'm going to Jelling to speak with the boy's parents."

"You're going to tell them that a British Defense Intelligence officer is looking into their son's kidnapping? They'll freak out."

"No of course I won't. I'll have a cover as an Interpol inspector. I've used it before. I'll tell you all about it when I return." He opened the door to walk out then stopped and turned. "And Norma, I'll not doubt you again." Sebastian left her room and started down the hall feeling better. He didn't head towards his quarters though. He had to hold up his end of an important bargain.

Morgen Stern stood on an old cobbled street just inside Bologna's ancient city center, watching the snow fall past one of the city's many towers. There was very little traffic here at this time of night. The only people braving the cold were some intrepid partygoers and the criminals who preyed on them. Morgen, while finely dressed as always, didn't look like a partygoer and certainly not like prey. He checked his watch, and as if by magic, headlights appeared in the distance. An unadorned Mercedes work van came down the street going very quickly until all at once applying brakes and coming to a momentary stop. The side doors flew open and a man in torn sweat stained clothes was pushed out. He moaned and rolled a couple of times as the van sped away.

"Good evening Alain", Morgen said as he approached the man who still hadn't gotten to his feet. He didn't offer a hand either.

"You!", Alain spit out and finally stood up. "I don't want to see you!"

"That's a problem", Morgen said with a shake of his head. "You work for me now."

"The hell I do!"

"Alain, it took some trouble to get you out of the hole the NATO people had you in, but if you prefer I could have them throw you back in the same hole or one like it", Morgen threatened. "Refuse me once more and that's what'll happen. I'm usually a patient man, but there are limits."

"What do you want with me? My contacts are blown. My business is in shambles."

"Your father says that you are good with computers."

"Yeah, so?", Alain asked, throwing his hands up and looking at the condemned sign on the front of his former apartment building.

"I'm in need of a man who's good with computers."

to be continued....

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