"Think of this as a chance at revenge," Sweeney said.

Revenge.

What a moronically quaint idea.

This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.

Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.

I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.

“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”

I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.

“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.

“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.

He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”

Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.

“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.

This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.

***

I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.

The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.

It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.

They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.

From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.

The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.

George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’

I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.

Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.

A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.

Refugio de Julia

Julia’s Haven.

Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.

I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.

In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.

George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.

I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.

He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”

Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.

Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.

He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.

He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.

Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.

On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.

I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.

The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.

I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.

The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.

When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.

***

We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.

As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.

It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.

Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.

“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.

I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.

I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.

I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.

In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.

It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.

Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”

Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”

Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.

I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.

It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.

The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.

I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”

Yeah.

It was indeed a fucking spike trap.

I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.

“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”

“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”

“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”

Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”

“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.

“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”

Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.

We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.

In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.

It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.

In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.

Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”

Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”

He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.

“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.

“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”

“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”

Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.

“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.

“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”

The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.

Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.

There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.

The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.

I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.

I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.

Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”

With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.

He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.

Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”

“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.

This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.

Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”

“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.

I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.

Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.

That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.

George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.

I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.

"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”

I knew what I was supposed to choose.

But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.

The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”

She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.

As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.

I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.

***

“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”

Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.

He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.

Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.

Hey everyone,
I could really use your advice on my situation. I'm currently in my final year as an international PhD student (non-EU) and I'm in a civil partnership with an EU citizen who has pre-settled status in the UK. As I approach the end of my PhD, I'm faced with the decision of which visa to switch to. Here are some details about my case:

It looks like my viva will be in September. If I pass straight away or with minor revisions, I can officially graduate by November 23 and apply for the Graduate Visa right away. If I choose this route, I'll receive the visa this winter but won't be able to work full-time until then.
- Opting for the Graduate Visa would extend my total stay in the UK to 7 years (including my Tier 4 visa). This means I would need 3 more years of visa to be eligible for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) through the 10-year route.
On the other hand, if I apply for a spousal visa now, I would likely receive it by September and be able to start working full-time a bit earlier than with the Graduate Visa. The advantage is that it would only take 5 years for me to be eligible for ILR.

Initially, I didn't consider applying for the spousal visa due to the associated hassle and the fact that the Graduate Visa seemed more straightforward and quicker to obtain. So here are my questions:

Which option do you think makes more financial sense in the long run?
The whole process of applying for a spousal visa honestly seems daunting, and I'm considering getting a solicitor's help. Can I realistically manage this without breaking the bank? (I aam extremely busy because of my thesis and really stressed a you can imagine so I am not sure whether I will be able to pull this visa off by myself).

I appreciate any insights or advice you can provide. Thank you in advance!

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"Think of this as a chance at revenge," Sweeney said.

Revenge.

What a moronically quaint idea.

This jumped up little shit had come into my home, interrupted my retirement and here he was talking to me about revenge, as if he knew the first thing about what I’d seen, what I’d been through, why I’d quit.

Looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t understand. I knew he couldn’t.

I've been hunting vampires for most of my life. I've killed more of them than I can count. But Clementine Di Cesare was no ordinary vampire. Hell, none of the Di Cesares were ordinary vampires, but even among them Clementine was… unique. She was the one all the others quietly feared. The one who was even spoken of with reverence by the Di Cesares masters, those twin Immortals who could not be killed by any weapon of this world. Seeking revenge against her was like seeking revenge against death itself.

“Revenge?” I repeated, with a dismissive scoff.
“You’re really going to tell me that after what she put you through, you don’t want revenge?” Sweeney asked.
“If you knew what she did to me, you’d know why I don’t want revenge,” I replied.
“Really? Sorry Franklin, but I don’t buy that. Look, I get it if you’re reluctant to jump back into the fight. I do. You of all people know just how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are. Especially ‘La Morte’.”

I looked over at him as he said that name. It rolled off his tongue so irreverently. To him, it was just a name. An alias assigned to some vampire he’s only heard of stories. He didn’t utter it with the respect it deserved, and I almost couldn’t be bothered to correct him. Any words spent on this small minded glory hound were probably wasted.

“Yes, I do know.”
“Which is why I need you,” Sweeney said. He almost sounded as if he were pleading with me. “Think of this as an opportunity to set things right… to put that vampire bitch in the ground where she belongs, and save God only knows how many lives in the process!”
I sighed.
He just didn’t get it.

“Mark my words, Mr. Sweeney, if you chase after Clementine Di Cesare, you’ll end far more lives than you save. She didn’t get a name like ‘La Morte’ for nothing. She earned it. Purchased it with the blood of the tens of thousands she’s sent screaming into the maw of Hell. She is not something you chase, Sweeney.”
“She’s a vampire,” Sweeney said dismissively. “She’s another enemy to destroy.”
“That’s what George Bundy said,” I replied. “Then not too long after, he died.”
“I’m not George Bundy,” Sweeney said.
“No. You sure as hell ain’t,” I agreed, before looking the kid in the eye.

He thought he was an up and comer, climbing the ranks of the Brethren. He probably thought of himself as some sort of badass vampire hunter too, when in reality he could never have so much as dreamed of holding a candle to the likes of Bundy… or hell, any of the men who’d died in Brazil.
“You should watch your tone with me,” Sweeney warned.
“Or you’ll do what?” I asked, “You ain’t going to frighten me with vague threats, boy. I’ve walked through Hell, trying to kill the Devil. What have you done?”

Sweeney bit his lip but didn’t respond.
“There’s nothing you can say or do that will intimidate me,” I said, before lighting myself a cigarette. I stared at the road outside of my porch, old memories flooding back to me before looking over at Sweeney again. He sat in his chair beside me like a sulky child. This was the man who wanted to destroy the Di Cesare family? Pathetic.

“Exactly how much do you know about the Brazil Job?” I asked.
“I know it was a failure. Clementine Di Cesare killed most of the men the Brethren sent out… all except for you. You were the only one good enough to beat her.”
“Good enough…” I repeated with a huff, “Hardly… whatever picture you’ve got in your head of some glorified battle, throw it away. Trust me, the Brazil Job was anything but glorious. It was a two hour long trek through Hell. And I didn’t beat Di Cesare at the end of it. I survived her. They’re two different things entirely.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” Sweeney said.
“You wouldn’t, would you?” I sighed and took another drag on my cigarette.

This kid wasn’t going to leave until I made him understand… so I told him my story. I told him everything even though I knew he’d learn nothing from it.

***

I’d joined up with the Brethren Knights of St. Fontaine back in the 1980s to hunt monsters. Back then, it seemed like the best use of my skills. I’d done my tours with the army, but even after I got out, I was still looking for an enemy to fight. So naturally, once I found out that vampires were real, I set my sights on them. It seemed like the most sensible thing to do at the time.

The Brethren Knights fancied themselves the descendants of the Knights Templar, and they insisted that their God given mission was to protect mankind from the things that lurked in the shadows. I didn’t really have much love for God at the time, but if the Bretheren were the ones fighting the monsters, then I was happy to tolerate the Jesus freaks in their ranks.

It was 1988 when we first heard whispers of the Imperium. A supposed cabal of vampires, trying to get them organized. At the time, it’d seemed too crazy to be true. Vampires generally went their own way, in my experience. At most, they might have a partner but other than they they didn’t really socialize with their own kind. But supposedly someone out there had the big fucking balls to keep them in line, and whoever they were, they scared the shit out of the Brethren.

They’d started targeting high profile vampires, trying to find someone who was involved in this ‘Imperium’, hoping that maybe they might get someone to talk. And it wasn’t long until they found someone who did.

From my understanding, the vampire they captured didn’t seem to know much about who was actually running the show. But they knew who their second in command was… and that was when I first head about the Di Cesare family.

The name was familiar to some of the higher ups in the Brethren, and I’d heard some stories. Not sure which were true, but the long and short of it was that the Di Cesare’s and the Brethren shared a bloody history, and didn’t particularly like each other too much.

George Bundy explained it to me like this at one point: ‘The Di Cesare’s are an old family. Most of them used to be witches, up until their Matriarch turned them into vampires. Now they’re a whole new kind of nasty. Far as I know, the only time anyone’s actually managed to kill one was about 200 years ago. Anyone who’s tried since has ended up dead, so most folks don’t even bother anymore.’

I guess it shouldn’t have been surprising they’d be involved in the Imperium, but the mere mention of their name ruffled some feathers higher up on the chain of command, and eventually they put out a kill order on them. Most of the Di Cesare’s were generally pretty hard to track down, but the top brass had a pretty good line on their matriarch, Bianca Di Cesare. Supposedly, she’d been spotted near the family’s private estate in Brazil and rumor had it that most of her daughters were there too.

Normally, the brass wouldn’t have sanctioned any kind of attack on them. The Di Cesare’s were already considered off limits, and attacking them at their private estate was considered damn near impossible. The estate was located in a small mining town outside of Manaus called Refugio de Julia, or just Julia for short. The town was fairly remote, being only accessible from a few backroads and most folks tended to avoid it, claiming they’d had various strange encounters in the area. Their accounts described unsettling pale figures with dark hair and large green eyes working in the mines, although some of the more disturbing stories we heard involved sightings of other creatures in the jungle surrounding the town. Massive spiders with humanoid faces, tending rotting corpses filled with stinging bees, giant howling beasts who tore through the forest, hunting prey, and beautiful women who would appear in the nearby towns, betwitching men into coming away with them only to reveal themselves as monsters who fed on the blood of their victims. Some had even claimed the Di Cesares themselves were such beasts… although those claims weren’t taken quite as seriously.

A skeptic might say the stories that surrounded Julia seemed like little more than just local superstition… but the Brethren had been dealing with the supernatural for long enough to recognize when something was probably real, and when it was probably fake and they knew damn well that most of the stories about Julia were probably true. None of them had ever dared set foot in Julia to find out for sure, since doing so would probably be suicide, but the theory was that the Di Cesares had created Julia as something of a refuge for other creatures. Other vampires, werewolves, arachne, karah and all sorts of other hellspawn. They offered them a home and safety in exchange for their labor in the mines. Hell, the name of the town more or less spelled it out.

Refugio de Julia

Julia’s Haven.

Julia had been the name of the only member of the Di Cesare family that the Brethren had ever killed, so I guess it was only fitting they named the town after her.

I honestly think using other creatures like them as a workforce was a bit inspired… since it made Julia damn near impenetrable. Reaching their estate at the far side of the town would have been impossible without being noticed by every creature of hell living in that town, and odds are they’d tear anyone apart long before they even reached the gates of the Di Cesare estate. And if one had the bright idea to approach the estate from another angle, they’d be trudging through miles and miles of rainforest to do so, only end up face to face with a massive stone wall that kept the rainforest out.

In effect - the Di Cesare estate was a fortress. Getting in would be no easy feat, to say nothing of confronting the vampires within. But with the fear of the Imperium gnawing at the back of their minds, the Brethren had finally set their minds to trying.

George Bundy had been the one in charge of planning the operation out.

I’d known Bundy before I’d joined up with the Brethren. Hell, Bundy was the whole reason I’d joined the Brethren. He’d been my CO a number of years back, and he’d earned his reputation as a hardass just about ten or twenty times over. Bundy was a gruff looking man with a bushy moustache and intense eyes. During the years I knew him, I don’t believe I ever once saw him so much as crack a smile. He only ever seemed to speak when he felt there was something he needed to say. Otherwise, he was usually dead silent.

He was somewhere in his late fifties back in 88. By all rights, he ought to have retired years ago. But he refused.
“I’m a soldier,” He said, when I asked him about it once. “That’s all I am. I don’t know what else to be.”

Bundy’s initial plan had been to hit the Di Cesare estate from the air. Come in fast and loud with a couple of helicopters and see how those vampires stood up to some good old American flak. The idea got shot down pretty quickly, so to speak. Apperantly, most if not all of the Di Cesares had cursed their own bodies, causing whatever wound one inflicted on them to appear on whoever it was who had wounded them. Going in guns blazing would have ended in a bloodbath… and not for them. There were also some concerns about drawing attention from Julia. With no conclusive data on just what they had living in that town, there was no guarantee we’d be safe in the air. A few eyewitnesses had described seeing giant nests in some of the trees in the jungle, supposedly consistent with the nests made by harpies.

Flying in guns blazing was out. So Bundy went back to the drawing board and what he came back with… well, it was ballsy, but it almost seemed like it just might work. During his reconnisance of the Di Cesare’s estate, he’d noticed a large but shallow tributary flowing into the amazon river that led right through the Di Cesare’s estate. Along the tributary was an abandoned water mill, that connected to the Di Cesare estate.

He’d suggested using the water mill to gain entry to the grounds, and from there, move on the Di Cesare’s. That plan had been approved, and Bundy had been allowed to handpick his team for the operation. He’d chosen fifteen men, all of them ex military, most of them having served under him before.

He’d told us we would be dividing into three teams of five men each. We would leave Manaus by boat, and land at three different areas near the tributary before making our way to the mill on foot, where we would regroup, before moving on the Di Cesares. The reason for the division was to ensure that if any of our teams ran into trouble upon making ground, the entire operation wouldn’t be compromised.

Team 1, led by Bundy himself would depart first and land to the west of the tributary. Team 2, led by a man named Ferdinand Hernandez would make land about fifteen minutes later near the mouth of the tributary and Team 3, to be led by me would land fifteen minutes later to the east.

On the day of the operation, I sat in my boat, watching as the other two left. It was twilight when we set out, and I remember that as my team and I carried out our final checks on our equipment, the only thing I felt was a familiar anticipation.

I’d hesitate to call it fear. Fear is what came later. Anticipation is the better word. I knew we could be walking into a tough situation… but I trusted Bundy. I trusted he’d run a smooth op. God knew, he’d done it a thousand times before.

The team assigned to me wasn’t anything particularly special. They were competent enough, but none of them would’ve been my first choices. Jack McMullen, for instance, who was about the same age as I was at the time. We’d both served under Bundy before, although while I respected Bundy, Jack was wholly devoted to him. I swear, if the man had told him to stuff a live grenade up his ass, Jack would’ve done it without a moments hesitation. I dunno if Jack simply saw him as the father he’d never had or what, but he damn near worshipped Bundy.

I can’t quite say the same for the other guys we had with us, though. One of them, some greenhorn by the name of Pearce Wilson struck me as an airheaded pretty boy who’d never actually had his boots on the ground before, while the other one, Scott Barber had left a bad taste in my mouth last time we’d worked together. Barber was capable… but he was violent. This was a kid with a hell of a chip on his shoulder, and it looked a hell of a lot like that Confederate flag patch he wore on his jacket. He wanted an excuse to shoot something, and I don’t think he cared what. Under most circumstances I’m not sure I would’ve fully trusted him with a gun.

The last one though, Joseph Feng… him I trusted. Feng was the one I knew the least about, and he didn’t seem much for conversation. But he handled himself competently enough and seemed to know when to sit down and shut up.

When Team 2’s boat was far enough away, we got the radio signal to follow. Barber was the one steering the boat, so I gave him the order to cast off and we ventured out into the twilight, unaware of just what was waiting for us out there.

***

We landed in our designated area fifteen minutes after Team 2 confirmed they’d touched down at theirs. Our landing was fairly uneventful. Feng, Barber, and I secured the boat before we radio’d Bundy to let him know we were in position. After that, it was just a matter of making it to the tributary.

As we ventured into the jungle, the world around us was quiet. There was wind, the whisper of the river behind us, and the sounds of animals. But little else. The river fell away behind us as we moved in single file toward the tributary, maintaining radio silence as we did.

It was about a half hour before we heard the gunshot.

Just one, echoing through the twilight. But it was enough to give us pause.

“The fuck was that?” I heard Barber ask. Immediately, the kid was on high alert, with his gun raised as if he were expecting every monster in Julia to come charging at us from all angles.
I just listened, waiting to hear if there was anything else. I half expected my radio to come to life, but it didn’t.
“Team 1, status?” I asked.
The radio crackled with static, but there was no response.

I tried it again, but still with no success. The radio was working, that much I was sure of. Something had to be blocking the signal.
“What’s going on?” Feng asked.
“Dunno,” I replied. “Comms are down.”
“Down?” Wilson asked, “So we’re flying blind out here, then?”
“More or less,” I replied.
“What do we do? Do we go back… if the comms are down…”
“Just because something’s jamming our signal doesn’t mean we’re made,” I said. “Relax. We keep moving for now. You keep your eyes wide open, and your head on a swivel. We’ll make it to the tributary and see if we can’t meet up with the other teams.”
I could tell Wilson wasn’t a fan of my answer, but I didn’t much care. We had a job to do, and I aimed to do it.

I pressed on without a further word and the others followed. Up ahead, I could hear the sound of running water and picked up the pace. I figured the tributary had to be close… and I was right.

I emerged from the brush into the stream, only to pause when I saw what was waiting for us in the water.

In the dying sunlight, it was impossible to mistake the bodies sprawled out on the rocks as anything else… and all I needed to do was look at their uniforms to know they were our people.
“Jesus…” I heard Wilson say under his breath. He froze up, lingering by the bank as I cautiously approached one of the bodies.

It belonged to a somewhat heavyset man with a thin mustache who I recognized as Hernandez. His eyes were still open, although lifeless and staring in different directions, and there was a clean hole in his forehead where a bullet had ended his life. The gunshot we’d heard earlier had likely been the sound of his death.

Looking at the bodies around him, I knew they had to be the rest of Team 2… although it was a little harder pinning down their cause of death. Some sort of bladed weapon, perhaps, judging by the state of them. I realized the odds were that they walked into some sort of ambush.
“What about Bundy and Team 1?” Jack asked, “Any sign of them?”
“No,” I said. “These bodies are all from Team 2… Bundy could still be ahead of us.”
“Then we need to keep going!”

Jack turned, heading up the stream and Barber was right behind him. Feng paused for a moment, thinking this over before following. Only Wilson remained.
“How do we know we’re not walking into a trap?” He asked.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” I said before moving to follow the others.
“With all due respect, Sarge… that doesn’t sound like the best course of action!” Wilson argued, finally following me. “It sounds just like a good way to get killed!”
“Yeah?” I asked, “I’m gonna tell you an ugly truth, kid. That’s the job. Make your peace with it, and it’ll go a lot easier.”

Wilson didn’t like that answer either and trailed off behind me, watching as I continued upstream. For a moment, I half expected him to go back to the boat… but no. I dunno if he found his balls or just didn’t want to get left behind, but he started to follow us again.

I kept trying to raise Team 1 on the radio while we walked, although I still had no luck. The light above us slowly faded into darkness as we trudged through the water in silence, guns sitting comfortably in our hands and mosquitos biting at our necks.

It wasn’t until we lost Feng that I heard anybody so much as make a sound, and when we lost Feng… it happened almost instantaneously. One minute, he was at the head of the group, walking just ahead of Jack and I. The next, he was gone, only barely having the time to let out a scream as he fell into the river ahead of us.

The rest of us paused. Jack seemed to freeze and I pushed past him, calling out for Feng as I did. As punishment for my compassion, I almost went down after him. I only barely stopped myself from stepping on the slippery rocks that had helped send him to his demise.

I could see Feng’s body in the water, and I could see the blood pouring out of him. He twitched a few times, but I knew he was dead. The sharpened wooden spikes jutting out of him confirmed as much.
“What the hell…” Jack said under his breath, staring at Feng’s corpse in disbelief. “That’s a fucking spike trap!”

Yeah.

It was indeed a fucking spike trap.

I could see other spikes jutting out of the water ahead of us, just past a small dam of rocks that were just slippery enough to make it difficult to stop yourself from falling. Some of those spikes had other bodies on them… likely members of Team 1. I only counted two, although that still didn’t exactly bode well.

“They put a fucking spike trap in the goddamn stream…” Jack said, “Who the hell does that?”
“Somebody who’s expecting us to use the stream,” I replied.
“So they know we’re coming?” Barber asked.
“Clearly…” I replied. “And they’ve got a good idea on what our route is too.”

“Yeah, no shit!” Barber snapped. “Christ… let’s get the fuck out of here. There’s probably more fucking traps upstream!”
“Bundy’s orders were clear!” Jack argued.
“Bundy’s probably dead by now!” Barber replied, before looking at me. “Sarge, come on. You have to know this is suicide!”
“Suicide was part of the job description, was it not?” I asked.
“The job is to kill those fucking vampires, not to die in the goddamn process! We need to get out of the stream and into the woods!”

“Judging by the fate Team 2 met, I’m not sure the forest is someplace we want to be right now,” I replied.
“Excuse me?” Barber asked, “What the hell are you talking about, Sarge?”
“Five men dead, but only one gunshot. How did the rest die?”

Barber didn’t seem to be able to answer that.
“By now… yes. It’s clear we’ve walked into a trap. And yes, I understand that it makes sense to try and leave that trap… but I don’t know if we’ll be safer in the jungle. Something jumped Team 2. Cut them apart, and then shot Hernandez as a warning. They didn’t have to shoot him. They did it so we’d hear.”
“Your point being?” Barber asked.
“I don’t think this is just a trap, Barber. It’s a game. Stop playing, and you might just end up like our friends downstream.”
“A game?” Wilson asked, “Sarge, you can’t be serious!”

“From where I’m standing, we have a better chance of surviving in the stream,” I said. “Look, we’re at least halfway to the rendezvous point, and there have to be at least two members of Team 1 left. The safest thing to do right now is to follow them.”
“You’re off your fucking rocker, Sarge,” Barber spat, locking his eyes with mine. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to try and fight me. But no. He was wise enough to stand down.
“If you wanna get yourself killed, go right the fuck ahead. Just leave me out of it! Wilson, come on,” Barber said before trudging over to the edge of the stream. Wilson didn’t even hesitate, just looking back at Jack and I quietly before he disappeared into the forest with Barber.

“You’re not gonna stop them?” Jack asked.
“No,” I replied. “God willing, there’s a chance that pigheaded asshole is right… dunno how much of a chance, but a chance.”
“Then how come we’re not following him?” Jack asked.
“There’s also a chance he’s wrong.”
I turned, before making my way around the spike trap.
“Keep a slower pace,” I said. “Watch for traps.”

Jack hesitated for a moment, but he followed me without any further questions and we walked in silence for a little longer.

We heard nothing from the trees. Nothing that told us about the fate of Barber and Wilson. I wasn’t sure if that was good news or not.

In fact, I don’t think we heard a thing until about a half hour later, when we heard the explosion.

It came out of almost nowhere, but ahead of us I could see a flash of light and hear the screams of men. On instinct, I found myself picking up the pace and could hear Jack behind me. In the low light, I saw a shape float past me in the stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was a severed human arm.

In the water ahead of us, I could see a figure clinging to one of the rocks and trying to pick himself up. I recognized him as George Bundy.

Jack was at his side almost immediately, trying to help the old man to his feet.
“Sir! Are you alright?”
Bundy just wheezed, before his legs gave out from under him. I helped Jack drag him to the shore so he could sit and rest for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, looking back at the stream.
“Grenade trap… I think…” Bundy panted, “Fucking tripwire… Popkov tripped it, I think…”

Popkov… odds are he was one of the two mangled corpses lying in the river a few feet away from us. It seemed they’d taken the brunt of the explosion, although Bundy still had some shrapnel in his arm that Jack was tending to.
“Christ… whole fucking ops gone to shit…” Bundy spat. “Team 2 got taken out just about as soon as they landed. Someone killed them and dumped them in the goddamn river. Lost half my boys to the fucking spike trap and half to this…”

He looked up at us, before spitting onto the ground.
“Guess you two haven’t done much better.”
“Hard to say,” I replied. “Two of ours took off into the woods, trying to avoid the traps.”
“Then they’re dead,” Bundy replied. “I’ve seen her watching us… always just up ahead, always from a distance… she’s seeing how far we’ll go. How much we’ll take…”
“She?” I asked.
“La Morte. Should’ve figured she’d be the one to greet us.”
“La Morte?” I asked.

“It’s Italian. Supposedly, she earned that name around the time the Di Cesares fled Venice. It’s funny, the Brethren like to act like the Di Cesares leaving Venice was some big victory of theirs, since before they did, they finally killed one of them… hard to call it a victory though, considering how many corpses they made before they fled. And most of them came from La Morte…”
Bundy winced in pain as Jack bandaged his arm before he continued talking.

“See… when the Di Cesare’s left Venice, one of them stayed behind. Clementine, the Scorpio sister. Guess she was unwilling to leave the fight unfinished… and according to the stories, the death toll she personally amassed in the years after the Di Cesare’s left Venice make the bodies they claimed during the Venetian Massacre a hundred and fifty years prior look like a pittance. The Brethren still occupying the city started to call her La Morte. Death. Cuz wherever she went, death followed in her wake… and it seems we’ve walked right into her open arms, haven’t we, boys?”

“You’re sure it’s her?” I asked.
“She’s a Di Cesare… and the shit we’ve seen out here… I don’t see any other Di Cesare setting those traps. It’s her. I’m sure of it. She’s watching us. Seeing how far we’ll go. Seeing if we’ll turn tail…”
“Should we?” Jack asked, and Bundy finally seemed to acknowledge him.
“Excuse me?” He asked.
“Should we? Look, sir… I’d follow you into the mouth of Hell, but right now, we’re down from fifteen men to three. Can’t say I’m optimistic about our chances right now. If this woman is half as bad as you’re saying she is, maybe it’s time we took a step back!”

Jack looked at me, hoping I might back him up, but I remained silent.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Bundy asked.
“What I’m hearing here, is that as of right now, the vampire out there could kill us at any time. She hasn’t. Far as I’m concerned, that’s mercy. Maybe we should be taking it while it’s offered.”
Bundy stared at him, before chuckling. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him laugh.

“Just walk away, then?” He asked.
“Walk away, and come back better prepared!” Jack corrected.
“Walk away,” Bundy said again. “We walk away now, and there won’t be a chance to come back better prepared. We get one shot at this. One. Failure is not an option. We go in there and we kill them or we die. End of discussion.”
“And how exactly are we even supposed to kill them?” Jack asked, “That curse they have… bullets aren’t gonna do shit, sir!”
“Yours won’t, mine will…”
Bundy pulled his pistol from his holster. I noticed some sort of pattern crudely engraved on it.

“I’ve been doing some research… studied the curse they put on themselves… and I think I’ve found a way to break it. Not sure if it’ll work yet… but we get one chance to test it.”
Jack stared at the gun, then back at Bundy.
“Sir… do you hear yourself?” He asked quietly, “You can’t be serious… right now, even with that gun we don’t stand a chance in he-”

The gunshot echoed through the forest and made me jump. Jack’s voice died in his throat as he hit the ground.

Bundy stared at him for a moment, before huffing and holstering his pistol again. He draped his coat over his shoulders, before looking over at me.
“No room for failure, Frank,” He said calmly.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I stared down at Jack’s body, my mouth hanging open slightly. When I looked back at Bundy, he was already back in the stream.

There was a tense silence between Bundy and I as I followed him along the final stretch of the tributary. He trudged on ahead, covered in sweat and straining with every step, but I could sense the quiet determination he had to see this through. Looking at him, you could’ve told me that George Bundy could wipe out the Di Cesare’s all by himself and I would have believed it in a second.

The night around us was full of sound, and each one drew my attention. I watched the forest, expecting to see some sign of La Morte watching us. But I saw nothing, except for what she wanted me to see.
“Mill’s just up ahead,” I heard Bundy say as we pressed on, although I noticed his steps faltering as he seemed to notice something in the trees above us. I stopped behind him, looking up before seeing what he saw, and when I saw it I felt my stomach turn.

I’d seen death before.
But what Di Cesare had left out for us… that was something else.
Pearce Wilson and Scott Barber weren’t dead.
But if they could have spoke, I’ve got no doubt they would have begged us to kill them. Wilsons pretty face was covered in blood and his pouty lips were parted as more trickled out of him. His curly blond hair was matted and I could see crimson there. Tree branches portruded from his ribs, while the loops of his entrails dangled out of his opened stomach. And Barber was in just about the same state, only he seemed to at least have the ability to turn his head to look at us.

I think he might have tried to speak, but the only sound he seemed to be able to make was a pained whimper.
“Jesus Christ…” I said softly.
“He had nothing to do with this,” Bundy replied. He took one last look at the two dying men hanging from the trees, before moving on.
“We should put them out of their misery, sir,” I said.

Bundy paused, before looking back at me.
“Don’t waste the ammo, Frank,” He replied. “They’re already dead.”
“Not yet they’re not!”
“Give them time. They chose to go into the woods. They can live with the consequences… for however long that lasts.”

With that, he left them. If I were a more compassionate man, I would have put them out of their misery. But no. Bundy moved on and so did I.

He approached the water mill, before examining it. It was an old building, made of stone that had long since been overgrown by moss, and sat right on the wall that separated the Di Cesares estate from the amazon. It hardly looked secure, even if the only entrance hadn’t just been an old wooden door secured with a padlock, finding a way in wouldn’t have been difficult. And it didn’t take much for Bundy to break through that door. All he needed was a couple of well placed kicks and it swung right open.

Drawing his gun, Bundy strode inside and I followed him.
“The Di Cesare’s will be in the main house,” He said. “We should find a way in through the back, try and catch them off guard. Main target should be the matriarch, Bianca. Her we should prioritize keeping alive… the rest are expendable.”

“Much as you are, I’m sure.” A voice called from deeper in the mill, and both Bundy and I froze.
I noticed movement on the floor above us, and through the shadows, I saw a tall woman watching us. She was dressed all in black, with blond hair tied back in a ponytail and the intense eyes of a soldier.

This had to be Clementine Di Cesare.

Bundy aimed his pistol at her, although she only barely seemed to notice.
“Only two of you left… I’m not sure the odds are in your favor,” The woman said. Her voice was low, calm and quiet.
“Only one way to find out,” Bundy growled.
“And only one way to walk out of this place alive,” Di Cesare countered. “You can put the gun down, turn and walk away. I won’t stop you. There’s no shame in living.”

“All the bodies you’ve left in your wake… that’s rich,” Bundy said.
“I don’t relish what I’ve done. I simply don’t know how to do anything else,” She replied. “Think about this, Bundy. Over my lifetime, there have been countless thousands who have come to kill me. All of them are dead, but I am not. Even if you could kill me… you could not kill my sisters. Not all of them. Not before they came for you.”
“Just you, would be enough…” Bundy said, before pulling the trigger.

I knew he’d hit her. I knew the bullet pierced her shoulder. But that woman… she didn’t even flinch. She simply dove out of the way before he could shoot again, taking cover and avoiding his next shot.
“Frank, upstairs!” Bundy snapped, “Flush her out!”
I went, trudging up the old wooden steps with my rifle drawn. Only to see Di Cesare vaulting over the railing and back down to the ground floor as soon as I made it up there.

Bundy shot at her again, only to miss for a second time. I saw Di Cesare’s arm move, and heard him cry out in pain. In the low light, I could see a dagger protruding from his shoulder. He stumbled back a step, leaving himself open for only a split second.

That second was all it took for Di Cesare to raise her own gun and fire just one shot.

George Bundy hit the ground without so much as a final scream. There was just a simple hole in his skull where she had shot him.

I felt my heart start to race faster. My eyes settled on Bundy’s gun, and I ran for the railing, vaulting it and dropping to the ground below with a thud. Di Cesare shot at me, and I felt the bullet tear through my leg. I reached out for the fallen gun and grabbed it before turning it on Di Cesare, only to find myself staring down the barrel of her own pistol. My finger rested on the trigger, but I didn’t have the guts to pull it.

"Kill me, and you will not see the sun tomorrow." She said, her voice still cold and calm.
“Killing you is part of the job…” I replied, but my finger still couldn’t squeeze the trigger.
“And is it worth your life?” Di Cesare asked. “You fail your mission either way.”
“And die with some goddamn honor…”
“There’s no such thing as honor. There is alive and there is dead. Choose.”

I knew what I was supposed to choose.

But my hands were shaking, as I stared into the face of death. My finger couldn’t squeeze the trigger.

The gun collapsed to the floor and Di Cesare kicked it away from me, before huffing and lowering her gun.
“Do not return,” She said softly. “Or next time, I will unleash a hell upon you that will make you beg for simple traps.”

She picked Bundy’s gun up off the ground, and then she was gone. After I finally picked myself up off the ground, I was gone too.

As I walked back along the stream… I passed the corpses of the men we’d left behind. Barber and Wilson, Jack, Feng, Hernandez, and his team. The flies were already feasting on them. Animals had already torn at them. And as I looked down at their cold corpses, I knew I had made the right choice.

I filed my report with the Brethren. Told them that Di Cesare had wiped us out, and a few months later I quietly retired. I never looked back.

***

“You walked away from her?” Sweeney asked in disbelief, “You had her dead to rights and you walked away from her?”
“I chose to live,” I replied. “Can’t say I regret the decision either. Because of the choice I made, I met my wife and had my kids. I’ve lived the life I had because I chose not to throw it away on some vampire.”

Sweeney just shook his head.
“You could have gotten the first confirmed kill on a Di Cesare in two centuries, and you threw it away you fucking coward! I could execute you for that!” I noticed his hand hovering over the gun on his hip.
“You could.” I replied, before quietly unholstering the pistol I kept at my side. I aimed it at Sweeney’s head.

He stared at me like a slack jawed idiot.
“Would you like to give it a try?”
“W-what…?”
“Would you like to give it a try, Mr. Sweeney? Or would you like to see the sun tomorrow?”
He stared down the barrel of my gun, and I already knew what his choice would be.

Sweeney took a step back. I saw his hand move away from his holster, and I lowered the gun with a huff.
“Thought so,” I said.
Mr. Sweeney left me without another word.
I knew he would not return.

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okay so some basic info, I 21F and my best friend 21F both work for the same company, it is a horse breeding stud for some context, each did not tell the other we applied for the job last year as we both went different route of getting the job, she got it through some connections while I did over 3 interviews to get the position.
So there recently came an opportunity for certain amount of staff to move to Australia and work for their spring and summer and possibly move out there for the rest of our careers. So I and best friend (who we will call Kate) along with 30 other applied for the position. there is a limited number of spots, 14 in total and I got one of the top position while Kate got an email to state she was rejected from the work programme. Now Kate has done nothing but talk about how she got the job to friends and family while telling them I had little chance as I didn't have "friends in the right places" so to say she was gutted when she got the email was an understatement, she called HR to rage to them about it and said they made a mistake and that they had to fix it at once as she demanded that she be but on to the first flight available. While I went out for dinner with my Bf to celebrate the good news. at this point I didn't have Kate told I was going, only my Bf and my father knew about it.
So Kate came over to talk to me and I knew it was about her not getting the position, while she was over she was so mad at the HR telling her she wasn't suited for the program. Kate then went on to talk about how I didn't get the job so she didn't feel as bad, it was in the moment I turned to Kate and told her I got the position and I was just waiting to start the process for my visa. Kates anger turned in to pure utter rage when I told her this. she began to scream and throw things at me which included a mug of fresh tea. After she started to calm down she began begging and crying asking me to turn down the position so that she could go instead of me. Kate then went on a rant of how she deserved it more then I did and it wasn't right for someone like me to go when it was rightfully hers.
Kate has gotten her family involved in the situation telling them I am the reason she can't go cause I took her spot and that I am being selfish and that I haven't put in enough work this year to get this. she has also started to tell people I slept with my manager to get a good recommendation from him for this position.

so would I be the asshole for taking this job?

TARDIS

The TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions in Space) is a Type 40 time capsule the Doctor nicked many years and regenerations ago. It travels throughout space and time by passing through a space-time vortex and is dimensionally-transcendental (bigger on the inside than the outside).
Space Travel

Time Travel & Manipulation

Security & Defenses

Navigation

Durability

Communication

Contains a microphone that has connected with a Dalek out of its casing, Captain Jack's vortex manipulator and Vinder's emergency communicator.
A holographic interface receives calls from other spaceships and places like Madagascar and UNIT HQ.

Observation

Scanning

Detection

Interfering with Technology

Remote Transportation

Addtional Console Functions

Intelligence & Sentience

Other

Sonic Screwdriver

The Doctor's version of a Swiss Army knife but without the knives or Swiss Army. The trusty Sonic Screwdriver functions as a scanner, door opener, machine operator and whatever ridiculous need arises.
Scanning
Temporal-Spatial

Classifying

Technology

Microscopic

Life Forms

Energy

Other

Limits

Manipulating Technology
Activation

Manipulation

Deactivation

Detection & Tracking

Locks

Manipulates doors from the past, present and future.
Opens a "big lock door".
Turns the wheel of a hatch.
Opens and closes electronic sliding doors.
Unlocks a row of padlocks.
Fries an electronic keypad to access a restricted section.
Unlocks a filing cabinet.
Releases Twirly from his exhibit.
Unbolts a door.
Opens the doors of an airplane hangar.
Opens and closes an airplane's cargo hatch.
Forces an auto-locked door open.
Unlocks an electronic cage and locks it when the Alpha Dreg is contained.
Locks a hatch door.
Frees herself from futuristic cuffs.
Opens up a Cyberfighter from a distance.
Opens an unmanned TARDIS.
Unshackles a Sontaran.
Opens the hatch on a train.

Physical Manipulation

Unveiling

Other

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Evan heard a ping on his phone. Huh? Who was messaging him at this hour?
He pressed the power button on his phone, watching through bleary eyes as the screen came to life. It was… an mp4 file. Sent through an unknown caller ID, with no callback number.
Tired, but curious, he hit the play button… seeing himself on screen. The background was pitch black, but he still got the sense that something was moving in it for some reason.
"So, one message to the me of the past?" the Evan on camera asked an offscreen individual. He chuckled. Evan looked at his video counterpart with confusion. Everything was the same. The dark-brown hair, the slim build, the not-quite-a-bowl-cut… There was also a look in his eyes. Of contemplation, deep thought… and despair… Eventually, the Evan in the video turned back to the camera.
"... You lose."
And then the video looped back around to the start.
What... the Hell?
Evan sat up straight in his bed, looking at the video play over again. 'I lose'? What the fuck does that mean??? More importantly, who sent this? He kind of doubted that this was 'me from the future'. A deepfake? Some kind of malware scam? Whatever it was, it felt like he was about to be in for a bumpy fucking ride. Full of calls to the bank, and to his lawyer, if he had to guess.
Evan stood up as he ran through his phone, checking his banking app, email, google accounts, everything. But… nothing seemed out of place.
Except for the bright flash outside.
He turned to look out the window, seeing purple light engulf the entire town of Harmony, and then as much of the surrounding woods as he could see. And, just as soon as it appeared, the light was gone.
As his eyes readjusted, all that remained were thin purple wisps in the distance, and a glowing purple orb, surrounded by a thin disc in the sky.
What the Hell!? What is happening!?
"... Fuck this." Evan walked back to his room with intent, unlocking the gun safe and retrieving his Colt 1911. He didn't have any idea what was going on, and he wasn't leaving his fate to chance.
Maybe the news has something. Almost as an afterthought, he turned the TV on as he hurried to put on clothes.
"- and we are working to figure out the situation as we speak. Whatever you do, do not attempt to leave more than two miles from town, as the barrier is an unknown at the moment of which we cannot discern the properties-..."
The news anchor stopped mid-sentence, looking off to the side. His expression grew horrified. The man took a gulp, turning back to the camera.
"... I've… just received news that the barrier turns anything it comes in contact with into shreds and chunks, before shooting the chunks back from the barrier... Whatever you do, do not approach it. I know you're scared, but we have to figure this out before it's safe to cross. I'll be staying on the news all day as this situation progresses, so keep-... Oh, Jesus Christ, what the fuck is that thing!"
Shrill screams of panic sounded off behind the camera, as the news anchor jumped out of his chair. The sounds of meat and flesh being torn, alongside screams of pain, could be heard out of view, as the anchor tried to run. Before he could even get past the feed, though, a massive abomination just appeared out of nowhere. Three thick, spindly limbs, with muscle taut against the bones of the monster carried it forward with a casual, terrifying gait as its damp, pale skin reflected the set lights. One of two tails, the one that was noticeably shorter than the other, though still long enough to reach almost four yards in front of the creature, shot forward in an instant, stabbing its bony, knife-like protrusion into the news anchor's shoulder and pinning him to the table. The man yelled in pain as red blood stained his gray jacket, before the creature loomed forwards, grabbing him by the chest with one limb and throwing him into the chair. The news anchor was visibly terrified… but alive.
"You, are… mine," the thing ordered, its throat reverberating with each word. As its face lowered into the camera view, Evan got a good look at it. Three eyes, one of which was replaced with a blocky, blue cybernetic, and the other two on the same side of its unnatural face, rested atop its almost crocodilian head. Teeth that seemed almost too thin for such a creature glistened like metal from its jaws as it spoke, turning to the camera.
"... You… all… are… mine…"
Its longer tail fired off behind the camera, sinking into flesh. No screams were heard, as the limp corpse of a woman in casual wear was dragged over the table by the monster's tail.
"Remember, that, as you, report." It sank its fangs into the girl's corpse, before ripping nearly the entire left half of her torso off, and guzzling the torn flesh down its loose, baggy throat. The news anchor looked to be on the edge of vomit as the creature walked off.
... Yeah, fuck that.
_
Evans began unloading his truck. In the forest, just half a mile away from the wall of the town-encompassing 'dome', (which was the source of that purple 'mist' he had seen from his window) there was a clearing for campsites. It was dark. And far away. Which, in his eyes, made it perfect. He wasn't sure what this thing wanted, or what resources it had at its disposal, but he intended to find out. He checked the mag for his handgun again, still seeing eight rounds loaded. Same as the last time. With a sigh, Evan loaded the mag back in, holstering it before he pulled out a tent from the back of the truck.
As the wireframe came loose… he felt uneasy. Something was wrong. Horribly wrong. There was no noise in the forest. No birds. No wolves. No owls. Nothing. And Evan swore he could feel the ground shaking… more and more each passing second.
Some forgotten reflex kicked in, as he dropped to the floor and scuttled under his truck. He barely got under the carframe in time, as the footsteps that shook the ground grew closer and closer.
As soon as he managed to fully pull underneath the car, the shaking revealed itself to be footsteps, as something launched at the truck at a missile-like speed. It slammed into the chevy's side, nearly tilting the automobile completely over, before giving out a shrill, ear-shattering screech. Evan held his hands to his ears, trying to block out the deafening noise as the monster continued attacking his truck. The sound of claws against metal echoed through the air as Evan saw a brief glimpse of the monster.
It had three bony tails, and a thick coat of feathers on its side. As one claw raked against his car, the creature's other long, lanky arm rested its knuckles on the floor as a third support for a moment, before the creature renewed its assault with both hands. He watched as the door was ripped off of its hinges, and the monster began ripping apart the dash and the passenger's seat. The shredding of pleather was easily audible, as its raptor-like foot grabbed ahold of a tire. It quickly kicked the wheel completely off of its hinges, sending it rolling off into the woods as it hissed out air. The tire seemed to grab the creature's attention, and it sprinted off into the woods after it.
... Jesus Christ…
_
[NEXT]
A.N.:So, trying my hand at an original story again. Going for a horror vibe :P
But, yeah, comment all ideas you have for this story, bc the it's pretty blank at the moment aside from the broad strokes, beginning, and end right now, so any ideas are greatly appreciated!
Also, dw, Life of a Predator, Idiot Aliens, and Survival of the Fittest are all still being worked on!

Ridley Kanzo -

Frame and fork

Frame: Kanzo Aluminium, Triple Butted Hydroformed 6061-T6 Aluminium, TA 12x142mm
Frame Material: Aluminium Alloy
Fork: Forza Oryx Disc, TA 12x100mm
Fork Material: Carbon
Steerer: Tapered
Bottle Cage Mounts: Double
Cable Routing: Internal
Mudguard Mounts: 1
Rear Rack Mounts: 1

Drivetrain

Groupset Manufacturer: SRAM
Number of gears: 11
Chainset: SRAM S350, 42T
Chainset type: Single
Chain: SRAM PC1130
Cassette: SRAM PG-1130, 11-42T
Shifters/Levers: SRAM Apex1 1x11-Speed
Rear Derailleur: SRAM Apex1

Wheels and tyres

Wheel Size: 700c (622)
Wheelset: Shimano RS171 DB, Front: 12x100mm; Rear: 12x142mm
Tyres: Vittoria Terreno Dry, Rigid, 700x38c

Braking

Brake Type: Cable Disc Brake
Brakes: REVER MCX-2 Flatmount mechanical disc brakes

Finishing Kit

Handlebars: Forza Stratos
Stem: Forza Stratos
Seat Post: Forza Stratos
Saddle: Selle Italia Model X

Rosta -

Frame: Aluminium 6061 T6 with Mudguard and Rack eyelets Fork: Full Carbon UD 1-1/8" to 1-1/2" with Mudguard eyelets Sizes: S, M, L, XL Colour: Brushed Aluminium Cable Routing:External Bottom Bracket :Threaded BSA Max Tyre Clearance:700x38c (or 700x35c with mudguards)
Handlebar: Tifosi Alloy Gravel Bar Seatpost: Tifosi Alloy 27.2mm Stem: Tifosi Alloy Saddle: Selle Italia Model Wheels: Vision Team 30
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Does one stand out as better than the other?

When we went to open a bank account for my father in 2020, we failed to bring his PAN, which was needed for opening the account. Because the bank was a long distance away, we decided to download the PAN card through the PAN website instead of going home to retrieve it. However, as soon as we entered the Aadhar number to download the card and verify the OTP. A new PAN was generated with a new number and got linked with Aadhar. Since then we got 2 PAN cards. But we have not used the new PAN anywhere. We only use the old PAN, which is linked to other bank and loan accounts. Not only did we receive two PANs by accident, but the new PAN was also linked to Aadhar. As you may be aware, having more than one PAN is illegal, and the new PAN, which we did not plan, is linked to Aadhar. We're at a loss on what to do. All we want is a single PAN, but it is not linked to the Aadhar, and the Aadhar is tied to another (incorrect) PAN. Please advise me on how to resolve this problem and assist me in correcting an unintentional error. I look forward to your advice.

This is my fault; when the new pan was created, I was afraid and did not inform my father

I have quite a handful of accounts with different digital banks.
Which do you think is more secure? Using an eSim or a physical sim?
I only know the advantage of the physical sim wherein you can enable a PIN code. But there are still risks of sim swapping, simjacking, etc. where someone who physically holds your sim card can still commit fraud.
As for eSims, I can't Google anything about it. It's basically just saying that fraudsters can't do that much because there's no physical sim card to begin with.
Any insights?
I just want to make sure that I practice security hygiene especially with digital banks that are entirely linked to our phone numbers.

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Details on how you can watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for free throughout the year are described If you're a fan of the comics, you won't want to miss this one! The storyline follows Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse as he tries to find his way home after being stranded on an alien Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verset. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is definitely a Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse movie you don't want to miss with stunning visuals and an action-packed plot! Plus, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse online streaming is available on our website. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse online is free, which includes streaming options such as 123movies, Reddit, or TV shows from HBO Max or Netflix! Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Release in the US Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse hits theaters on December 2023. Tickets to see the film at your local movie theater are available online here. The film is being released in a wide release so you can watch it in person. How to Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for Free? release on a platform that offers a free trial. Our readers to always pay for the content they wish to consume online and refrain from using illegal means. Where to Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? There are currently no platforms that have Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Versehts to Watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Movie Online.MAPPA has decided to air the movie only in theaters because it has been a huge success.The studio , on the other hand, does not wish to divert revenue Streaming the movie would only slash the profits, not increase them. As a result, no streaming services are authorized to offer Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Movie for free. The film would, however, very definitely be acquired by services like Funimation , Netflix, and Crunchyroll. As a last consideration, which of these outlets will likely distribute the film worldwide? Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Netflix? The streaming giant has a massive catalog of television shows and movies, but it does not include 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.' We recommend our readers watch other dark fantasy films like 'The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf.' Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Crunchyroll? Crunchyroll, along with Funimation, has acquired Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Versehts to the film and will be responsible for its distribution in North America.Therefore, we recommend our readers to look for the movie on the streamer in the coming months. subscribers can also watch dark fantasy shows like 'Jujutsu Kaisen.' Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Hulu? No, 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' is unavailable on Hulu. People who have a subscription to the platform can enjoy 'Afro Samurai Resurrection' or 'Ninja Scroll.' Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Amazon Prime? Amazon Prime's current catalog does not include 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.' However, the film may eventually release on the platform as video-on-demand in the coming months.fantasy movies on Amazon Prime's official website. Viewers who are looking for something similar can watch the original show 'Dororo.' When Will Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Be on Disney+? Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the latest installment in the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse franchise, is coming to Disney+ on July 8th! This new movie promises to be just as exciting as the previous ones, with plenty of action and adventure to keep viewers entertained. you're looking forward to watching it, you may be wondering when it will be available for your Disney+ subscription. Here's an answer to that question! Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Funimation ? Crunchyroll, its official website may include the movie in its catalog in the near future. Meanwhile, people who wish to watch something similar can stream 'Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train.' Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Online In The US? Most Viewed, Most Favorite, Top Rating, Top IMDb movies online. Here we can download and watch 123movies movies offline. 123Movies website is the best alternative to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse's (2023) free online. We will recommend 123Movies as the best Solarmovie alternative There are a few ways to watch Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse online in the US You can use a streaming service such as Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video. You can also rent or buy the movie on iTunes or Google Play. watch it on-demand or on a streaming app available on your TV or streaming device if you have cable. What is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse About? It features an ensemble cast that includes Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Wilde, Gemma Chan, KiKi Layne, Nick Kroll, and Chris Pine. In the film, a young wife living in a 2250s company town begins to believe there is a sinister secret being kept from her by the man who runs it. What is the story of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? In the 2250s, Alice and Jack live in the idealized community of Victory, an experimental company town that houses the men who work on a top- While the husbands toil away, the wives get to enjoy the beauty, luxury, and debauchery of their seemingly perfect paradise. However, when cracks in her idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something sinister lurking below the surface, Alice can't help but question exactly what she's doing in Victory. In ancient Kahndaq, Teth Adam bestowed the almighty powers of the gods. After using these powers for vengeance, he was imprisoned, becoming Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Nearly 5,000 years have passed, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has gone from man to myth to legend. Now free, his unique form of justice, born out of rage, is challenged by modern-day heroes who form the Justice Society: Hawkman, Dr. Fate, Atom Smasher, and Cyclone. Also known as ?????? ???? Production companies : Warner Bros. Pictures. At San Diego Comic-Con in July, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had other people raising eyebrows when he said that his long-awaited superhero debut in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse would be the beginning of “a new era” for the DC Extended Universe naturally followed: What did he mean? And what would that kind of reset mean for the remainder of DCEU's roster, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the rest of the Justice League, Suicide Squad, Shazam and so on.As Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse neared theaters, though, Johnson clarified that statement in a recent sit-down with Yahoo Entertainment (watch above). “I feel like this is our opportunity now to expand the DC Universe and what we have in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which I think is really cool just as a fan, is we introduce five new superheroes to the world,” Johnson tells us. Aldis Hodge's Hawkman, Noah Centineo's Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell's Cyclone and Pierce Brosnan's Doctor Fate, who together comprise the Justice Society.) “One anti-hero.” (That would be DJ's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.) “And what an opportunity. The Justice Society pre-dated the Justice League. So opportunity, expand out the universe, in my mind… all these characters interact. That's why you see in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, we acknowledge everyone: Batman , Superman , Wonder Woman, Flash, we acknowledge everybody.There's also some Easter eggs in there, too.So that's what I meant by the resetting.Maybe 'resetting' wasn't a good term.only one can claim to be the most powerful superhero .And Johnson, when gently pressed, says it's his indestructible, 5,000-year-old Kahndaqi warrior also known as Teth-Adam, that is the most powerful superhero in any universe, DC, Marvel or otherwise . "By the way, it's not hyperbole because we made the movie."And we made him this powerful. There's nothing so wrong with “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” that it should be avoided, but nothing—besides the appealing presence of Dwayne Johnson—that makes it worth rushing out to see. spectacles that have more or less taken over studio filmmaking, but it accumulates the genre's—and the business's—bad habits into a single two- hour-plus package, and only hints at the format's occasional pleasures. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” feels like a place-filler for a movie that's remaining to be made, but, in its bare and shrugged-off sufficiency, it does one positive thing that, if nothing else, at least accounts for its success: for all the churning action and elaborately jerry-rigged plot, there's little to distract from the movie's pedestal-like display of Johnson, its real-life superhero. It's no less numbing to find material meant for children retconned for adults—and, in the process, for most of the naive delight to be leached out, and for any serious concerns to be shoehorned in and then waved away with dazzle and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” offers a moral realm that draws no lines, a personal one of simplistic stakes, a political one that suggests any interpretation, an audiovisual one that rehashes long-familiar tropes and repackages overused devices for a commercial experiment that might as well wear its import as its title. When I was in Paris in 1983, Jerry Lewis—yes, they really did love him there—had a new movie in theaters. You're Crazy, Jerry."Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse " could be retitled 'You're a Superhero, Dwayne'—it's the marketing team's PowerPoint presentation extended to feature length. In addition to being Johnson's DC Universe debut, “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is also notable for marking the return of Henry Cavill's Superman. The cameo is likely to set up future showdowns between the two characters, but Hodge was completely unaware of it until he saw the film. “They kept that all the way under wraps, and I didn't know until maybe a day or two before the premiere,” he recently said Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) FULLMOVIE ONLINE Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Available On Hulu? Viewers are saying that they want to view the new TV show Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Hulu. Unfortunately, this is not possible since Hulu currently does not offer any of the free episodes of this series streaming at this time. the MTV channel, which you get by subscribing to cable or satellite TV services. You will not be able to watch it on Hulu or any other free streaming service. Is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Streaming on Disney Plus? Unfortunately, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is not currently available to stream on Disney Plus and it's not expected that the film will release on Disney Plus until late December at the absolute earliest. While Disney eventually releases its various studios' films on Disney Plus for subscribers to watch via its streaming platform, most major releases don't arrive on Disney Plus until at least 45-60 days after the film's theatrical release. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has finally ended the box office blues. It will be a Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse call, but based on the estimates, the year's biggest opener remains Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with its $187 million start. Nonetheless, Wakanda Forever's $180 million opening is a huge one, being the biggest ever for the month of November (beating the $158 million of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), the second biggest of the year, and the 13th biggest of all time (though it could go up or down a few slots once the actuals come out). It led an overall weekend box office of $208 million, which is the fourth biggest of the year and the biggest by a long shot of the past four months, with no other weekend since July 8 -10 even going above $133 million. This isn't the $202 million opening that we saw from Black Panther in February 2018, nor should we expect the amazing legs that were able to get that film to an astonishing $700 million. With that said, expect it to perform strongly throughout the holiday season, likely repeating the five-weekend number-one streak that the first film had, and it shouldn't have any trouble becoming the second-highest-grossing film of the year so far, beating the $411 million cume of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The audience response is strong, with the A CinemaScore falling below the first film's A+ but bouncing back from the B+'s earned by Doctor Strange 2 and Thor: Love and Thunder, which ranked among the worst for the MCU. an improvement over the recent franchise installations, with the aforementioned films coming in at 74% and 64% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes, both at the lower end for Marvel films, while Wakanda Forever's 84% is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verser to franchise norms, though not meeting the high bar set by the first Black Panther' s 96%. The sequel opened to $150 million internationally, which Disney reports is 4% ahead of the first film when comparing like for likes at current exchange rates. Overall, the global cume comes to $330 million. Can it become the year's third film to make it past $1 billion worldwide despite China and Russia, which made up around $124 million of the first film's $682 million international box office, being out of play? It may be tough, but it's not impossible. Legging out past $500 million is plausible on the domestic front (that would be a multiplier of at least 2.7), and another $500 million abroad would be a drop of around $58 million from the original after excluding the two MIA markets. It'd be another story if audiences didn't love the film, but the positive reception suggests that Wakanda Forever will outperform the legs on this year's earlier MCU titles (Multiverse of Madness and Love and Thunder had multipliers of 2.2 and 2.3 respectively). As for the rest of the box office, there's little to get excited about, with nothing else grossing above $10 million as Hollywood shied away from releasing anything significant not just this weekend but also over the previous two weekends. When Black Panther opened in 2018, there was no counterprogramming that opened the same weekend, but Peter Rabbit and Fifty Shades Freed were in their second weekends and took second and third with $17.5 million and $17.3 million respectively. That weekend had an overall cume of $287 million compared to $208 million this weekend Take away the $22 million gap between the two Black Panther films and there's still a $57 million gap between the two weekends. The difference may not feel that large when a mega blockbuster is propping up the grosses, but the contrast is harsher when the mid-level films are the entire box office as we saw in recent months. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which is the biggest grosser of the rough post-summer, pre-Wakanda Forever season, came in second with just $8.6 million. Despite the blockbuster competition that arrived in its fourth weekend, the numbers didn't totally collapse, dropping 53 % for a cume of $151 million. Worldwide it is at $352 million, which isn't a great cume as the grosses start to wind down considering its $200 million budget. Still, it's the biggest of any film since Thor: Love and Thunder, though Wakanda Forever will overtake it any day now. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse came in third place in its fourth weekend, down 29% with $6.1 million, emerging as one of the season's most durable grasses and one of the year's few bright spots when it comes to films for adults. The domestic cume is $56.5 million Fourth place went to Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which had a negligible drop of 5% for a $3.2 million sixth weekend and $40.8 million cume., in fact ) , which isn't surprising considering it's the only family film on the market, and it's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse to grossing four times it's $11.4 million opening. Still, the $72.6 million worldwide cume is soft given the $50 million budget, though a number of international markets have yet to open. Finishing up the top five is Smile, which had its biggest weekend drop yet, falling 42% for a $2.3 million seventh weekend. Of course, that's no reason to frown for the horror film, which has a domestic cume of $103 million and a global cume of $ 210 million from a budget of just $20 million. The one new specialty title of note comes from a filmmaker we don't typically associate with the specialty box office: Steven Spielberg. The Beard's semi-autobiographical family drama Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse opened in four theaters in New York and Los Angeles to $160k, a $40k average. The film expands to 600 theaters the day before Thanksgiving, and it has the potential to break out in a way that none of the other season's awards contenders have. We're also seeing very solid numbers from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which grossed $1.7 million this weekend for a seventh-place finish, bringing its cume to $5.8 million.Alhamdulliah

One reference was found in the U.S. press to the roundups of Panamanian union leaders after the invasion -- in the 25th and 26th paragraphs of an article in the Boston Globe. See Diego Ribadeneira, "Resentment of U.S. spreads in Panama City," Boston Globe, January 1, 1990, p. 1. The reference:

Marco Gandasegui, director of the Center for Latin American Studies, a research institute [in Panama, stated:] "With thousands of American troops in the streets, you aren't going to see people staging anti-American demonstrations." But in what was perhaps the first public anti-American display, several dozen Panamanians demonstrated Thursday against U.S. soldiers as they arrested two leaders of the telecommunications union. They were suspected of possessing arms but none were found. They were arrested anyway, because, according to U.S. diplomats, they were on a list of several hundred people whom the Endara government seeks to detain.
As for why the people on the list -- mostly political activists and labor leaders -- were wanted, a senior official in the U.S. Embassy said, "We weren't given any details, just that the Endara government wanted us to get them. They're bad guys of some sort, I guess."

For reports about the Panama invasion and its aftermath outside of the mainstream U.S. press, see for example, Ramsey Clark [former U.S. Attorney General], The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf, New York: Thunder's Mouth, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 126-127):

I flew to Panama on the first day commercial flights were permitted to operate after the U.S. invasion. . . . Surveying devastated neighborhoods; finding a 120 x 18-foot mass grave; talking with Red Cross, hospital, and morgue workers, and religious, human rights, labor, student, and other leaders, I readily counted hundreds of civilians dead. The press, however, initially asked no questions about civilian casualties. When eventually prodded in early January, General Stiner repeatedly stated that 83 civilians were killed, and the media faithfully reported that number. A press conference I held before leaving Panama, like a number held thereafter by a private commission formed to investigate and report on Panama, was virtually ignored by the mass media. Estimates of casualties from that commission and many other religious, human rights, and health groups ranged from 1,000 to 7,000 dead. By 1992 a consensus was emerging around 4,000 Panamanians killed. Yet the media used only the final Pentagon figure of 345 Panamanian deaths when it explained why angry crowds disrupted President Bush's visit to Panama in June 1992.

Linda Hossie, "Skepticism growing in Panama over official invasion casualty toll," Globe & Mail (Toronto), January 8, 1990, p. A9. An excerpt:

Sources in Panama City tell stories of hundreds of Panamanian soldiers gunned down from U.S. helicopters after fleeing their headquarters in Old Panama or while trapped in a dead-end street near Fort Amador. Others claim that a large number of bodies were burned on a city beach and that as many as 600 people are buried in mass graves. . . . Virtually all the Panamanians interviewed agreed that the vast majority of the dead are civilians.

Alexander Cockburn, "Beneath a peak in Darien: the conquest of Panama," Nation, January 29, 1990, p. 114. An excerpt:

Roberto Arosemena, a professor of sociology well known in Panama for his fifteen-year nonviolent resistance to military dictatorship [said] . . . U.S. troops . . . had conducted rigorous searches, usually destroying property and acting without regard for children and old people. Now, he said, there is an extreme display of U.S. forces throughout the city. They patrol neighborhoods in eight-to-fifteen-person units, carrying combat rifles. When Panamanians accompany them, it is always in a ratio of the Panamanian to two G.I.s, and the Panamanians never carry anything heavier than a pistol.
According to Arosemena, about 1,200 people are currently detained in camps in the U.S. military compound. He spoke to one man who had been held, a civilian former government worker, who told him that detainees were bound hand and foot, eyes blindfolded and mouths bandaged. They were loaded into trucks and when they reached the installation they were thrown out, some of them suffering injuries. Then they were interrogated by U.S. military personnel. John Weeks and Phil Gunson, Panama: Made in the U.S.A., London: Latin America Bureau, 1991, especially chs. 1 and 5.

On the Endara government's statement about the U.S. "military occupation," see for example, "News in Brief: Panama; Two Scathing Reports," Central America Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol. XXI, No. 4, February 4, 1994, p. 8. An excerpt:

In surprisingly strong terms for a government office, CONADEHUPA [the Panamanian governmental National Human Rights Commission] argues that the rights to self-determination and sovereignty of the Panamanian people continue to be violated by the "state of occupation by a foreign army." Among violations committed by the U.S. army, CONADEHUPA lists the campaign Strong Roads 93, air force flights in different provinces, the participation of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.) in search and seizure operations, a D.E.A. agent's assault on a Panamanian journalist and incidents of attacks on Panamanian citizens by U.S. military personnel.

On the international organizations' actions against the U.S. invasion and Panama's occupation, see for example, "Panama ousted from the Group of Eight," Central America Report (Guatemala City, Guatemala: Inforpress Centroamericana), Vol. XVII, No. 13, April 6, 1990, p. 99. An excerpt:

President Guillermo Endara's government receives one of its worst diplomatic setbacks since taking office, as the Group of Eight [what are considered the major Latin American democracies] formally ousts Panama from the organization, claiming the Endara government is illegal and demanding new elections. . . . At the sixth meeting of the Group of Eight on March 30, foreign ministers from seven countries (Panama was suspended in 1988) issued their most forceful dictum against Panama to date. Basically they agreed on three points: Panama's permanent separation from the G-8, a call for immediate presidential elections and the limiting of activities by U.S. troops. . . . The final resolution noted that "the process of democratic legitimation in Panama requires popular consideration without foreign interference, that guarantees the full right of the people to freely choose their governments. . . ." The G-8 suggests that the U.S. military is operating outside of its mandate, affecting Panama's sovereignty and independence as well as the legality of the Endara government.

Does anyone have an updated version of the image showing what pokemon from what games can be transported to Home and using what route (transporter / bank)? Included BDSP, SwSh and SV. Thanks! ❤️

I have seen various posts and some confusing comments, so I wanted to write up my own experience with SMB Multichannel.
See setup image;
https://postimg.cc/ts8XX51P
I went from my old 1gb switch copy speed of 116mb/sec, to now 300-460mb/sec by upgrading my switch and adding another 2.5gb network card/connection.
This is a way less expensive route than adding a 10gb network card in both the pc and Synology and using a 10gb switch. Right now 2.5gb is pretty cheap for network cards (USBC-2.5gb is under $40, 2.5gb PCI cards are under $30, 2.5gb switches $125, or 2.5gb with a 10gb uplink under $160.) I did purchase a 10gb card but it’s only running at 2.5gb for now. (Canadian Price Samples)
Depending on your Array and Type, and the number of disks used will affect the max transfer speed. This is tested with 5 x 12tb IronWolf drives, 1 x 16tb IronWolf Pro in a SHR1 volume, with 2 x Samsung M2 R / W Cache in a DS1821+
Crystal Disk Mark v8, using 4gb test, shows; 401mb/sec read, and 462mb/sec write (assuming the write cache is helping here)
Anyhow happy with the results of my 2.5gb upgrade at a really reasonable price vs going the 10gb, much more expensive route.
This was all done using DSM 7.2, with no real setting changes or geek stuff on the computer end using Windows 11. On the Synology End, check that;
Control Panel / File Services / SMB / Advanced Settings / Others
- Enable SMB3 Multichannel (Checked)
Control Panel / Network / Network Interfaces
- All four network interfaces showing connected separately - not bonded
The Switch I purchased is NICGIGA 9 Port 2.5gb with 1 Port SPF+ 10gb, fanless and does not get too warm; it’s identical hardware / same pcb board if taken apart and sold in over three flavors; SODOLA, NICGIGA, MOKERLINK, etc)
Great Video about the 2.5gb switches;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgLU-HT1E64
Hope this helps someone else that was wondering if the jump to 2.5gb is worth the effort.

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