It was 0300, or 3:00 AM in local time, in East Atlanta, United States of America, and the area was lit up like the Fourth of July, but nobody was celebrating.

  Blue and red lights flashed across the cracked, unkempt asphalt of Mayson Avenue and Foote Street, turning the impoverished neighborhood into a scene straight out of a war zone. Police cruisers lined the street, their doors open to create barriers and keep everyone out. This wasn't an ordinary drug bust; something entirely different was happening, leaving both the locals and the law enforcement absolutely bewildered.

  Heavily armored FBI tactical vehicles sat ominously in the center of it all, oriented toward a smattering of run-down houses with barred windows and peeling paint. US Marshals in full gear moved between the vehicles, checking equipment and speaking into their radios as they maintained another layer of security just behind the Local and State law enforcement. Whatever the feds were hunting, it wasn't just another corner boy with a few ounces of crack.

  "Keep 'em back!" A Georgia State Patrol sergeant barked at his men, who were struggling to prevent the rowdy crowd of evicted residents from breaching their line. "Arrest anyone who even thinks about trying to break through!"

  The GSP and Atlanta Police officers looked uncomfortable as hell. They were deep in Henchmen Gang (5L) territory—a Nine trey Blood set that ran these blocks like their own personal kingdom. For now, the known gangsters felt content to just bitch and posture, but the Atlanta PD officers kept their hands near their service weapons as more and more people poured out of the surrounding buildings.

  "Ay yo, what the fuck y'all doing?" A young man in a black hoodie pushed toward the police line, his crew flanking him. Gold grills caught the strobe lights as he spoke. "This our block! Y'all can't just run up in here like you own this shit!"

  "Sir, step back," an Atlanta PD officer said, trying to keep his voice level. "Everyone needs to remain outside the perimeter."

  "The fuck you mean?!" Another voice from the crowd. "Man, fuck that! My grandmama stay in that house! She ain't done nothin’ and y’all kicked her out just like that?!"

  The crowd was getting thicker, angrier, and bolder. It was one thing to deal with one thug who had their pants sagging down to their knees and threw up signs, but when groups start to form, people get stupid and bold. Suddenly, someone gains a brief spurt of bravery, and their hands drift to their waistbands. A few had done so, but they hadn’t quite pulled out a weapon, though it sure as hell made every officer know they had something on them. The posturing was textbook: chins up, shoulders squared, and that aggressive lean forward that said they weren't backing down.

  "On folks nem, y'all better not be in my shit!" someone shouted from the back. "I got papers for everything in that crib!"

  Despite the massive police presence, the tension was starting to turn up a notch, and it was clear the gangsters really didn’t want law enforcement personnel snooping around the house they were hitting. The Feds had kicked the hornets’ nest and violated an unspoken rule the local PD usually followed—you didn't run around these blocks unless something serious was going down. A few arrests, sure. Serving a warrant on a trap house when absolutely necessary? Expected. But this? This was a major escalation.

  "We're gonna need more units. Crowd's growing and getting hostile." The GSP sergeant keyed his radio, voice tight.

  It was an escalation that made The Henchmen Gang members even more anxious and twitchy than usual. The local and state police didn't fully understand the details—everything was kept secret, on a need-to-know basis—but these criminals knew exactly what was happening, who was targeted, and why.

  The multitude of alphabet soup agencies had completely encircled the target house and forced everyone on the block to evacuate. Never in living memory had something like this happened in East Atlanta. Whatever the federal government wanted, they were more than willing to risk the inevitable lawsuits that were going to fly their way for violating people's rights.

  Gangsters continued to posture outside the perimeter, trying to find a way to interfere. It was almost as if they were ordered to be here, but no one did anything too crazy after seeing the armored vehicles labeled FBI and the lurking US Marshals eyeing the crowds with rifles at low ready. It was clear no one was fucking around. Still, it would only take one idiot to make shit hit the fan.

  However, the tightly wound tension was soon cut short by an absolute flurry of gunfire.

  "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" Several officers pulled their weapons, spinning around looking for threats. But the federal agents seemed unperturbed.

  The gunfire came from inside one of the cordoned-off houses, and it was a rip that sounded more at home in a warzone than a warrant service.

  "All units stand down. Officers serving the warrant have made entry.” The dispatcher's voice crackled over the network. “We have been assured that the situation is under control."

  “Under control?” One of the APD officers nearly laughed as they all exchanged glances. “That sounded like the streets of Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War! How is that ‘under control’?” The man jeered as he turned back toward the now brooding and quiet mob.

  But, as quickly as it started, the gunfire died down.

  The gangsters outside whispered urgently to each other, probing the perimeter like they were desperate to get in. A few started pushing forward.

  "Hey! Hey, stop!” An officer yelled, drawing his taser. “Fuck off or I’ll taze the shit out of you!"

  "The fuck, you gon’ do bitch?!" One thug shoved him hard.

  A scuffle broke out as officers and gangsters started shoving and yelling, but a few Marshals rolled up with more teeth than bark. As the Marshals' rifle lights sent rapid blinking strobes, the brewing riot was prematurely stopped. The gangsters backed off as both groups managed to pull their people back before it escalated. The two sides separated into a tense standoff, hands hovering near weapons.

  With their hands full, none of them noticed what was happening deeper in the neighborhood. An armored car backed up to the target house while US Marshals used their unmarked vehicles to block sight lines.

  But one Georgia State Patrol officer slipped away from the standoff to grab his rifle from his cruiser, just in case. As Dug snatched his AR-15, he looked over his shoulder and caught something through a particular angle just over the bed of an unmarked US Marshal's F-150.

  A behemoth that looked like a man, standing at least seven feet tall and built like an NFL linebacker on steroids. He was draped head to toe in heavy tactical gear, with ballistic plates covering his entire upper body. On his left arm, the giant carried a massive ballistic shield that had a rather particularly asinine sticker on it. A simple smiley face with "SURPRISE!" written above.

  Dark humor aside, the most disturbing part was that the shield looked to be… riddled with so many bullet impacts that it had to be near failure. Not only that, but the officer could see strange colored impact marks on the shield along with a deep gouge on one side, which looked like someone had taken an axe to it.

  But in the Hulk’s other hand was a 16-pound demolition sledgehammer, soaked in blood and bits of flesh.

  The officer might have panicked if not for the massive FBI patch on the giant's custom oversized plate carrier. However, another oddity that was equally jarring followed right behind the giant as they walked by. Striding more confidently was a woman with pointed, elongated ears that looked more at home at Comicon than a SWAT raid.

  Moreover, this woman was pushing a handcuffed suspect along in a rather painful way, with her left arm threaded under his, lifting his cuffed arms at an angle that forced him to walk on his tiptoes while her hand was grabbing a fistful of his hair. The poor guy’s head was yanked so far back that he could barely see where he was going. Each step forward required him to arch his back awkwardly, a position meant to maintain full control while inflicting maximum discomfort without causing permanent damage—a textbook pain compliance technique that was usually heavily frowned upon in law enforcement if not outright police brutality.

  It was a sight that caused a cognitive disconnect for the officer. He saw the familiar shape of a wannabe model who could have been plucked directly from an Instagram feed—the high, long, dark blue ponytail, the runner leggings that hugged her figure, the tight long-sleeve top that stopped at her forearms.

  Nothing seemed to fit. The contrast between modern feminine athletic clothing and high-speed operator gear was too jarring to process. Hell, this woman’s chest rig was even arranged like that of an assaulter and held only a plate and a few magazines. Her short-barreled AR-15, hanging from her chest, felt more suited for shady work than law enforcement.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Blinking hard and repeatedly, the GSP officer wondered if stress was making him see things. Pointed ears? On an FBI agent? Everything about this woman made the massive three-letter patch ‘FBI’ on her chest and back seem hilariously absurd. He would rather eat rocks than believe she belonged to such a formal agency that was such a stickler for rules and decorum.

  The man’s gaze lingered a moment longer before something clicked behind his eyes—why in the hell was he looking at something that was clearly none of his business? The Georgia State Patrol officer wore the look of a man who knew better than to even think about whatever worries he might have about what he saw.

  More importantly, he knew better than to keep gawking no matter what was happening. He liked his job, and losing it by being even slightly aware of what the FBI was up to would not be the best outcome. So it didn’t take much to convince the officer to turn his attention back to his cruiser and focus on checking his rifle's optics.

  At the same time, Lysandra’s eyes kept drifting toward that same officer, wondering if she would need to have a word with someone, until she noticed the deliberate disengagement. She smirked beneath her neck gaiter. Smart man. It seemed even in this world, people could be a little nosy, but she had to give credit to the law enforcement of this world. They were professional and knew when to mind their own damn business.

  Her teammate—a seven-foot orc that was present during the CIA’s more kinetic lessons that she just called Grump—hummed ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ as he could before tossing his now-useless ballistic shield into the back of the open armored car. It seemed the quasi-monster threw it a bit too hard, as a horrendous metallic crash resounded and caused several agents to flinch.

  "Ahhh…! Infinite hells, you're pulling too hard!" The prisoner suddenly whined with heavily accented English while he tried to twist away from her grip.

  "Tace, stultus," Lysandra immediately hissed for him to shut up in her native tongue before pushing upward on his arm harder eliciting another scream of pain as the detainee’s shoulder started to slip in its socket.

  Lysandra couldn’t help but glare at this idiot with her one good eye and snarl. She knew this worthless piece of shit had advice on how to brew up some truly nasty stuff in this god-awful mess of a house. While Lysandra didn’t know much about human vices, she understood they had them.

  She, however, knew about the illegal alchemical concoctions from her world. While some were considered euphoriants or more recreational, most of the substances Lysandra was used to had a purely utilitarian purpose. This could range from physical performance enhancers, mental stimulants, arcane amplifiers, or even elemental affinity attunements.

  There was a variety of applications for alchemy, although they came with some… very nasty effects and side effects if not made by professionals with actual quality control.

  Back in her world, elixirs and flasks were as common as coffee. Flasks of stamina allowed one to bypass the body's natural thresholds and sustain physical effort much longer. Some vapor inhalers sharpened the mind to a razor's edge, allowing someone to hold complex spell matrices for hours, or even helping the mundane maintain focus for just as long. There were eye drops that temporarily granted enhanced vision at night. Even simple energy draughts kept soldiers marching longer or served as quick morning pick-me-ups when diluted.

  When properly crafted by guild-certified alchemists, the substances were relatively harmless. Sure, you'd experience an uncomfortable come-down—muscles aching like you'd been hit with hammers, mental fog as thick as soup, and grogginess that made you want to crawl into bed for a week. But nothing permanent. Nothing that couldn't be slept off or fixed with another proven alchemical concoction.

  The dependency, though... that’s where things got really nasty. Warriors who couldn't face battle without a fearless elixir. Scholars who needed clarity flasks just to think straight. The body was quick to adapt, and when substances were abused, it often led to one forgetting how to function without that chemical crutch.

  But the unauthorized stuff made by any no-name fool with an alchemical book? The stuff this piece of garbage had been brewing? It was beyond horrifying in many ways.

  One of Lysandra’s original tasks as a newly appointed knight was to patrol the streets, hunt down the rogues, and deal with the victims. It was one thing to be dependent on guild proven concoctions, pills or remedies, but whe none got addicted to the illicit stuff… Things got nasty.

  On the lighter side, someone might become so overwhelmingly addicted that their mind gradually starts to decay and their impulse control diminishes. In more… extreme cases, deformities began to appear in lower-quality or even experimental batches. Bones started to warp, the skin sloughed off in patches, and organs suddenly began to decay as one slowly turned into something worse than the Undead.

  At least the Undead stopped rotting…

  But what really haunted Lysandra were the mental effects. People caught in waking nightmares that lasted for weeks. Individuals who forgot how to speak, recognize faces, or tell the difference between reality and the screaming void in their minds. She watched a kid—no older than sixteen—claw his own eyes out because he couldn't stop seeing his dead mother crawling out of the walls. Another was found eating glass, convinced it was candy, his mind so scrambled so badly, that he couldn't feel his mouth tearing apart.

  The worst part? The stuff was easy to make but hard to do right. It didn’t take many hits of the tainted stuff for the brain to start rewiring itself. You’ll need more and more of it just to maintain the illusion of normalcy. Without it, users experienced withdrawal that made some of these earthly substances seem like a mild headache, except for a few particularly nasty ones.

  If Lysandra had something to compare it to, it would be the more extreme opioids or tranquilizers. These caused inevitable and complete psychotic breaks. Withdrawals usually involve violent seizures and a burning desire that drives them to do just about anything to get another fix.

  And this asshole, whether he was skilled or not, had been helping the people of Earth try to mass-produce some of it for distribution.

  Another howl of pain escaped the detainee’s mouth as Lysandra yanked him up again just for good measure. While it made the elf feel a little better, a few FBI agents seemed to disagree as they shifted the display, as it edged uncomfortably close to excessive force protocols they had to follow.

  Never mind the blatant violations of Constitutional rights this… ‘team’ had committed, but there wasn't much the Law Enforcement agencies could do since Lysandra had her people were... loaners from a rather notorious agency. There was going to be hell to pay in the form of litigation in the near future, but the FBI knew any complaints would fall on deaf ears.

  This entire operation had become the mandate of the American people, given the expanded powers Congress had quietly granted Law Enforcement agencies after the Ohio Incident.

  The shadiness of this specialized loaner team became even clearer as more operator-looking individuals filtered in behind Lysandra. Each of them wore a neck gaiter to hide their features and carried themselves more like elite butchers than SWAT officers.

  It was obvious these individuals were either poached from ‘The Company’s’ highly regarded paramilitary units. They looked, walked, and quacked like poached Tier One or Two operators who swapped their roles in covert foreign operations for fake FBI credentials to operate within the continental United States.

  While making up the vast majority of this new task force, they weren’t alone. More netizens from that anomalous area, dressed in the same tactical gear, joked and laughed with the operators as they headed toward the armored vehicles. Each of them looked like just another high-speed Law Enforcement Agency tactical team member, save for their strange features and the fact that they all wore the same goofy patch as Lysandra.

  On the woman's chest, just below the three-letter FBI patch, was a smaller patch with the words "DON'T PANIC" written in big, bold yellow letters. It was a play on the acronym of the unit they actually belonged to: PANIC, the Pan-Anomalous Neutralization and Isolation Command. Only those in the know understood what it meant and how serious they were. To everyone else, it was just a humorous morale patch.

  "We'll do our best to sweep the rest of the house for intel," an FBI agent sighed as he approached Lysandra from the side of the truck, giving other agents an uncomfortable look. "But you left a... mess in there. I get you're not LEO, but… ya gotta at least try to take people alive at the bare minimum."

  Lysandra shrugged. "What do you mean? We have someone alive." She flashed him a cheeky smile as she pushed the detainee toward their Bearcat armored truck and loosened her grip on the poor man’s hair.

  But as she did that, Lysandra’s ear caught the faintest noise. Her gaze immediately shot down to see the prisoner's lips subtly moving in a quiet chant. Without hesitation, Lysandra reacted instantly by using her arcane abilities to boost her strength, gripping the man's hair tighter and thrusting her arm forward. His head slammed against the Bearcat's armored door with a horrible thunk, causing him to momentarily go limp. Then he squirmed sluggishly, moaning.

  "Whoa, whoa! What the hell?! We don't do that here!" Several agents started forward in alarm, but Lysandra raised a hand to stop them.

  “Relax,” Lysandra harrumphed. "You don't know what my people are capable of or what they can do. Just a few words from this one, and things could have turned very ugly, very fast." She said, glaring at the FBI agent giving her a dirty look, not quite believing what she's saying. “And trust me, you probably don't want him getting off whatever spell he was trying.”

  The agents watched blood pour from the detainee's head and pool on the cracked asphalt. At first, they all thought she just straight-up brained the man, but after a few agonizing moments, a horrible, pained groan escaped the detainee’s mouth. He wasn't quite dead, but he definitely had a severe concussion.

  Although no one really wanted to admit it, Lysandra wasn't wrong. There had been other incidents where officers and agents were horribly killed or maimed because they treated these otherworlders like regular people. One agent in Chicago had half of his body completely burned to the point of fifth-degree burns.

  It surprised everyone that fifth-degree burns even occurred, and when someone looked into it, they found that’s when bones started to melt.

  It was obvious that everyone was now operating in murky waters. Their standard procedures had to be completely overhauled and created on the fly due to the very unique circumstances they found themselves in, and old habits died hard. When your entire career as a federal agent is under a microscope by any dickhead with a lawyer wanting to sue or cause a fuss, you tend to act accordingly. But now that the microscope seemingly got tossed in the trash can…Law Enforcement personnel everywhere found themselves in a rather jarring situation, to say the least.

  "Come on, let's hurry this up," Lysandra said, grabbing the severely concussed and bleeding detainee by his collar. With one smooth motion that belied her frame, she tossed him into the back of the Bearcat like a sack of potatoes, causing the poor soul to hit the metal floor with a wet thud.

  As more pained groans echoed out, Lysandra reached up and pulled the advanced in-ear hearing protection from her long, pointed ears—custom-made Peltor TEP-300’s that had been modified to fit her non-human anatomy. "Think we actually got a viable lead on Matthias not that far from here."