Thankfully for Seneos, it appeared that the team he was to meet with had decided to run late just as he was. For once, he wouldn't be blamed for a mission not starting at the right time. It made him curious, however, as he had still been somewhat briefed about said team, and they seemed far above him. Then again if he didn't know them, and he knew all those who stood at the top, they would have to be rising stars.
Those who started with everything being handed to them developed bad habits. He wouldn't know, he had lived a horrid routine and had still developed the same habits. Perhaps it all had to do with one's original personality, and he dreaded the possibility that the Sleepers he would soon meet, could be as rotten as he was.
Those were the thoughts that occupied his mind as he made his way toward the location of the beacon. As unimpressive as it seemed, it still had a decent size. It didn't look nearly as dangerous as the ones he would occasionally see on television. He had never seen what society would call a dangerous beacon with his own eyes before, but he knew that if he had been standing before something that horrific, he wouldn't have felt as calm as he did in front of the one he was supposed to enter.
He had at least heard of what a truly disastrous beacon could be like. How could he not. The greatest catastrophe in human history had been caused by one of them, and he knew that nothing had changed ever since, that the threat was still out there. He wouldn't have called himself a coward, but he was certain that he couldn't go near something like this. He would freeze up in terror. And yet, he knew where he stood. One day he would have to be good enough to face such a challenge. He had been dreaming of closing this one beacon that no one could.
But now was perhaps not the best of the time to thing of such things. He would be getting jittery enough later on.
He was always as calm as he could before a job. It was during, and not before or after, the job that he often gave others reasons not to trust him, or want to work with him again. It was a wonder he had been given an offer so soon after his previous failure. Yet he had no one to thank for it. He felt no gratitude at having been offered a new chance.
He was just that kind of man. At least he could cut some slack to the team he would be working with. No need to antagonize them too quickly.
As he thought of such things, his ears perked up. He could hear a loud vehicle coming his way. It sounded fairly close to the black motorcycles he had been used to hearing in the morning, all the sleepers who were doing well for themselves bought such bikes from the local sleeper-exclusive dealerships. This one though sounded far too loud. The noise nearly made him wince as it reached him. The driver stopped a few meters away from him and looked around, searching for something or someone.
They removed their helmet to reveal a face Seneos had never seen before. It did confirm what he had theorized. He was dealing with new sleepers. They were far above him in terms of ranking, but they had very little experience. He would have known about the red-haired pretty boy that had just shown up otherwise.
The man in question clicked his tongue and looked in Seneos' direction.
"It's just you and me?" He asked with poorly hidden annoyance. Technically he was late and so was the rest of his team, while Seneos could act as though he had been waiting for quite a long time. He had learned not to try to lie to those stronger than him, so he would not attempt such folly.
"Uh, yeah. Seems like it. I just arrived, so it looks like we were all running late." He responded with a bit more snark than he had been going for. The man did not seem to remark this, however, and simply sighed before actually parking his motorcycle on the sidewalk. The beacon was located in a fairly unassuming neighbourhood, in between a small park and a clothing store. Said store was surprisingly open, as though the beacon presented no threats. It was inactive, so it would not suddenly start spouting the monstrous creatures the Sleepers were sent to deal with, but this seemed like dangerous conduct.
Seneos' only concern was his own safety, as such the story was only given some thought as he and the qualified Sleeper waited for the rest of the team. After twenty minutes, a phone rang and Seneos looked to his right.
"Oh, so you finally decide to call me you little bitch, huh? Yeah, I'm standing near the beacon, and guess what? None of you fuckers are here!"
Raising an eyebrow, Seneos watched the shockingly vulgar sleeper insult someone who appeared to be from his team. It carried on for far longer than it should have before the phone was thrown on the ground with far greater strength than any common human could muster.
The Sleeper ran his hand through his long hair and offered Seneos a shaky smile.
"Alright, so...It appears that we're gonna have to do that shit on our own." He explained, the smile disappearing as soon as it had appeared. If he had been trying to be polite, he was obviously not all that great at it.
Seneos would have questioned what was even going on, but he was immediately dragged towards the beacon. The other sleeper only stopped when they reached it.
"Here's the thing man. My team called me for nothing because they ain't going to show up right now, and I didn't come here just to wait. So we're going on and taking all the shit we can for ourselves. I'm Hojosa by the way, remember the name because you're about to hear it on every news channel in a few months."
He finished with a hand on Seneos' shoulder, as if it would calm his rising panic.
"Wait a second there, you want to go inside and basically handle everything on your own!? I'm like....At the bottom of the rankings, you do know that, right!?" He screamed right into Hojosa's face. In other circumstances, he might have been much calmer, but he had become fairly good at reading people and the literal idiot in front of him was entirely serious.
Hojosa did a double take and furrowed his brows in confusion. He scratched his chin with his left hand, the numerous silver rings on his fingers rubbing against his skin as he pondered over what he had been told.
"You....You're at the bottom? You are telling me that with your weird hair and with your face, you're supposed to be an Icelos? "
The question seemed to make perfect sense to the man, but Seneos could only scrunch up his face in pure confusion.
"What is that even supposed to mean!? I literally have no armour on and I have a shitty dagger to defend myself. What do my hair and face have to do with that?" He responded with his own interrogations. Hojosa simply rolled his eyes as if he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Look, it wouldn't be the first time someone with a high rank tries to look low-key to avoid paparazzi, and your equipment doesn't really hide your hair and face. Your grey hair looks way too natural and that's plain weird. And then even if you don't take care of it at all, you do have a handsome face. I mean, you don't even come close to me, but still. You look shady as fuck. Every high-ranking Sleeper looks shady, that's a common rule. But hey if you really don't want to do anything during the mission, I'll be just fine anyway." Hojosa deadpanned, and Seneos was torn between simply leaving or entering the beacon to shut the man up.
"You...You are literally one yourself. And no, you will not be fine facing whatever kind of nightmares are inside that beacon all on your own."
With all the madness that Seneos now knew the man possessed, Hojosa simply waved his concerns away and entered the beacon. A tear in the fabric of reality opened before Seneos, and just as it always did, the beacon's beauty silenced the grey-haired alcoholic. There was something oddly calming about those beacons. It seemed unnatural for such horrific things to be calming, but they were. As though they were not wells that would spill out the worse horrors mankind could think of.
With a shaky breath, Seneos calmed himself. There was no need to hesitate at this point. All he could do was to make sure the Sleeper with the worse attitude he had ever met wouldn't die before his comrades showed up.
As he entered the beacon and felt the familiar sensation of going through water, which seemed to be a recurring feeling that would never cease to affect Sleepers no matter the number of beacons they would enter, Seneos froze in an instant.
He dived to his left, right before a maw of wicked fangs could tear apart his throat. Lifting himself up and looking around in mute terror, he realized that he hadn't just dreamt what he had seen.
It appeared that he could have somehow underestimated the difficulty of the task at hand. He certainly did not know how he and his new least favourite Sleeper were going to survive, now that they were surrounded by at least thirty wolves.
And the worst part of it all was that he could feel his whole body tremble in pure ecstasy. He knew at that moment, that he was not going to get a recommendation from that new team either.
He simply could not stop himself, and he knew it was already too late when the wolves that gathered in front of him whimpered in fear.
It sure sucked to be him.