Template:Featured Articles/37-2018

'Moment of Awesome: Nina Thurman/Domino: Acting as Kevin's eyes and ears while he investigates an old lead, Domino finds herself only able to listen as he is ambushed. "I've got Sapien Leaguers in here! Throw up an alert on the system in here and lock the place down!" Three more shots went past him as Kevin continued to bounce his way down the stairwell, easily outpacing them. "Jesus, HELIOS is connected to the old case! It has to be!" "Shit, your hunch was right? I guess I owe you a drink." Dom couldn't help the spike of adrenaline that flared up as her fingers danced over the keyboard; she could just make out the sound of footsteps and gunshots in the background. "Okay, I've got the main door locked down - emergency exit's still okay but I can hit that too once you're through. Just past the reception desk, takes you out into the back parking lot." "Set something up for Underwood short term - she won a vacation or something far out of town!" Kevin hit the final set of stairs at a dead run. The exit was just ahead. "HELIOS was a Soviet asset in the 60s. We thought we had it nailed in '65 but we never figured out what we were after. Disappeared after that. We- shit." Kevin went through the door and pulled up as two men were waiting, one with a phone to his ear and both carrying shotguns. Kevin recognized one from the safehouse they'd bugged earlier. He didn't have a second to try and shift his body for protection as the first blast hit him in the chest, just above his heart. He crashed down, phone pinwheeling away. One of them stepped on his chest and the second blast was to the left side of his face, blowing out the eye socket and shattering the skull behind it. Dom winced at the sound of the gunshot, too close to be a miss this time. That was going to sting. "Syd?" There was no response. "Syd??" "--'mon, get out of here," came a distant voice, and then the receding sound of footsteps. Still no Kevin. Dom went cold, her fingers going numb and her mouth dry as a two-day hangover. There was a ringing in one of her ears - the gunshot? Maybe. "Okay," she murmured to herself, setting the cell phone down carefully on her desk, "better let the others know shit just got a whole lot more serious." Attn all team - need an extraction at following address. KS down and unresponsive. Sapiens League at large. It would've been easier to send the text on her own phone, but she couldn't quite bring herself to hang up the line.