Enterprise car rental hunt valley md

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Hey everyone! I’ve used budget truck rental to move in the past, and I’m using them again for another 1500 mile move, but I saw that enterprise would be a lot cheaper (16 foot truck-diesel) even with the $0.19 per mile charge. These trucks get better fuel mileage and I also plan to tow our Kia Sorento. Does anyone know whether the enterprise rental trucks are equipped to tow vehicles or pull car carrier trailers? I tried to call a branch today but they’re closed for the holiday, so hopefully someone on here has experience with this! The lift gate would be an awesome added bonus and it would save almost $1000 to use enterprise, IF I can tow a vehicle with their cab-over truck. Thanks in advance everyone!

We are most likely relocating to Aus for a new job on very short notice and am trying to figure out where to look for a house rental.
In terms of requests:

• Really good government primary school
• 3-4 bedrooms preferably new with insulation/AC and minimal yard due to demanding jobs and no free time (coming from NZ and don’t want a cold house)
• Other expats (we are moving from NZ but are effectively American)
• convenience to the tram or the train since we will only have one car
• ideally < 1300 a week
• Not too pretentious of a neighborhood and ability to meet people and make friends

About us - we worked in tech for a long time in Silicon Valley and left pre COVID to have better work/life balance. Spouse and I are both introverts who love to travel, cook, watch dorky sci shows but kiddo is super extroverted and is really worried about not having friends.
The only people we know are in St. Kilda, Brighton area so those are the only neighborhoods I have a tangential frame of reference for.
Are there other neighborhoods that people would recommend? Spouse will be primarily wfh and I will probably be working downtown.

So, we're moving to Canberra with our three-year-old from overseas and need to rent a car for a couple of weeks while we hunt down a car to buy and an apartment to rent. After checking out reviews and prices, it seems like Sixt is a solid choice. They've got good rates and people seem to be pretty happy with their service.
Now, about buying a car, I'm all ears if you've got any recommendations! We want to make sure we find a trustworthy place to buy from.
Also, I read everywhere that the rental market is oversatured and you need to be very lucky to even find a place. While we get this sorted out with only one income to start with at around 100k, what would be a good place to stay at? Hotel or Airbnb?

<< The Trials
Friday, February 25, 2000 / Trial 2 / Day 21

• Page 47: Closing Arguments
  
• Verdict Sheet
  
• 1:35PM: Jury deliberations begin
  
• 4:25PM Verdict Read; Syed convicted of:
  
  • First Degree Murder (Life)
  • Kidnapping (30 years, consecutive to life)
  • False imprisonment and robbery (10 years, concurrent with kidnapping)
• Rabia remembers going down to see Adnan that same evening, and says that's when Adnan gave her Asia's letters, (according to Serial podcast.) Adnan remembers calling Rabia on the phone, telling her about the letters, and mailing them to her.
  

Saturday, February 26, 2000

• Baltimore Sun:
  
  • Jury finds teen guilty of killing ex-girlfriend; Adnan Masud Syed faces possible life term for Hae Min Lee's death
  • Jury Finds Teen Guilty of Kiling Ex-Girfriend

Monday, February 28, 2000

• Memo from Gutierrez Associate Rita P. to Gutierrez
  
  • Adnan has called and he is requesting Patuxent. Rita reminds that Patuxent isn't taking lifers.
  • Adnan has told Rita that he wants Gutierrez to handle his appeal.
  • Adnan would like to meet with Gutierrez before sentencing.
  • Rabia has called and wants to set up a meeting ASAP.
  • [No mention of Asia.]
• Rabia, Shamim and Tanveer meet with Gutierrez who has reluctantly agreed to meet them. If they discussed Asia, Rabia did not include this information in her memo to the mosque re; new witnesses.
  
• Adnan writes a letter to Yusuf
  
• Approximate: Rabia mails Adnan sentencing guidelines and information about prosecutorial misconduct.
  
• Adnan has been in jail/prison for one year.
  

Tuesday, February 29, 2000

• According to Rabia, NBC's Dateline airs an episode about a wrongfully convicted man.

Wednesday, March 1, 2000

• Rabia Memo updates the Masjid Committee re; the meeting with Gutierrez.
  
  • Rabia suggests pressuring witnesses, but doesn't mention Asia.
  • Rabia tells the Masjid Committee: "At appeal it is generally suggested a different attorney is used rather than the trial attorney. This was even suggested by Ms. Gutierrez herself." Fourteen years later Rabia told Sarah Koenig that she thought Gutierrez bungled the trial on purpose, so she could make money off the appeal.
• Upon conviction, Adnan parents and mosque had paid $95,800 to Gutierrez's firm and there was an outstanding balance of $57,292.
  

Friday, March 3, 2000

• Gutierrez visits Adnan re: his appeal.
  
  • Her last prison visit was on September 17, 1999, before the trial.
  • March 3, 2000 is Gutierrez's eighth and final face to face (prison) meeting with Adnan.
  • Did they discuss Asia?

Saturday, March 4, 2000

• According to Adnan (Rabia's book), this weekend is the first time he told Rabia about Asia's letters (despite what Rabia told Sarah.) In Serial, Rabia says she received Asia's letters from Adnan on Friday, February 27.)
  
  • Letter from Adnan to Rabia
  • Doesn't mention Asia or her letters.
  • Adnan has received the sentencing guidelines and information about prosecutorial misconduct, that Rabia mailed him.

Monday, March 6, 2000

• Cristina Gutierrez files Motion for new trial. Issues raised:
  
  • Adnan's due process rights were violated when Judge Heard refused to let the jury know that Jay did not plead guilty to accessory after the fact.
  • Judge Heard refused to allow Adnan to prove that Jay's plea agreement included unwritten benefits.
  • State didn't disclose Jay's plea agreement prior to the trial.
  • Verdicts were "against the weight of the evidence."
  • There was insufficient evidence to sustain the convictions.
  • Heard improperly restricted the defense's presentation of its case.
• Approximate: According to Adnan, this is when he mails copies of Asia's letters to Rabia
  

Wednesday, March 8, 2000

• Jay's driver's license is suspended by the DMV for failure to appear on three traffic citations.

Friday, March 17, 2000

• Approximate: According to Rabia's book, she received Asia's letters -- via the mail from Adnan -- "a couple of weeks" after March 4. (In 2014, Rabia said that Adnan gave her the letters the same afternoon he was convicted.)
  
• Approximate: Rabia's To Do List includes getting Asia to sign an affidavit
  

Saturday, March 25, 2000

• Rabia and Saad track down Asia. Rabia and Saad drive Asia to a check cashing place to sign an "affidavit".
  
• This affidavit narrowed the alibi to 2:40PM based on Murphy's closing arguments.
  

Thursday, March 30, 2000

• Adnan's parents write letter to Gutierrez, imploring her to use Asia's affidavit. No mention of Asia's letters.
  
• Adnan's letter to Gutierrez asking her to use Asia in a motion for a new trial. No mention of Asia's letters.
  

Friday, March 31, 2000

• Approximate: Rabia weighs possible outcomes of not firing Gutierrez

Saturday, April 1, 2000

• Gutierrez receives Adnan's letter.

Monday, April 3, 2000

• Adnan's parents write a letter to Judge Heard asking to postpone sentencing (and motion for a new trial) because Gutierrez had just been fired. (Letter received Tuesday, April 4?) No mention of Asia's letters.

Wednesday, April 5, 2000

• According to Adnan, the motion for a new trial was to have been argued on April 5.
  
• According to Judge Welch:
  

  The sentencing proceeding was scheduled for April 5, 2000. On that date, Judge Heard granted Petitioner's request to dismiss M. Cristina Gutierrez as Petitioner's counsel, and agreed to postpone the sentencing so that Petitioner's new attorney had time to adequately prepare.
  During the [April 5] proceedings, Judge Heard indicated that while she would not normally have the authority to remove Ms. Gutierrez as petitioner's attorney, the administrative judge, Judge Mitchell, granted Heard limited authority to hear Petitioner's request.
  

Sunday, May 21, 2000

• Adnan's 19th Birthday (Second birthday celebrated in prison.)

Monday, May 29, 2000

• Jet magazine issue with this photo is published and makes its way to the holding area for inmates in the "bullpen."

Tuesday, June 6, 2000

• Adnan is sitting in the "bullpen," waiting to be sentenced. He writes to Krista:
  

  You know what’s really weird? I was looking through this Jet magazine, in case you didn’t know it features African-American issues. -- Adnan tells Krista that Hae had been appearing in his dreams, and that dreams like this have a certain significance in Islam. Adnan writes that he was looking through this Jet magazine and he does a double take because the girl looks so much like Hae. Even her watch looks like Hae’s watch. Adnan writes: Take a look at it and tell me what you think. I hope I’m not going crazy.
  

• Sentencing hearing with Judge Heard: Transcripts (courtesy of redditor stop_saying_right, after Rabia refused to share.)
  
  • Adnan represented by Charles Dorsey.
  • Adnan maintains his innocence, despite Dorsey asking for leniency for a "crime of passion."
  • Adnan sentenced to:
  • Life in prison for 1st Degree Murder
  • 30 years for kidnapping (consecutive to murder)
  • 10 years for robbery (concurrent with kidnapping)
• Motion for new trial denied: This motion was filed March 6 by Gutierrez. Dorsey didn't argue in support of this motion. He may not have been aware of it. Even Heard was surprised by the lack of response from Dorsey as to the motion for new trial.
  
• Application for Leave of Appeal his sentence filed in Court of Special Appeals (CoSA) MD.
  
• Maryland law allows only 10 years from the date of sentencing to file the PCR motion.
  

Wednesday, June 7, 2000

• Baltimore Sun:
  
  • 19-year-old gets life sentence for killing former girlfriend
  • 19-year-old gets life sentence for killing former girlfriend
• Approximate: Thiru Vignarajah receives a a master's degree from King's College in medical ethics and law.
  

Wednesday, June 14, 2000

• Adnan writes to Rabia about the sentencing hearing. Adnan refers to his attorney as "This genius, Dorsey..."
  
• Adnan writes to Krista, referring to Dorsey as a "jerk."
  

  Sarah Koenig: Eight days later, post sentencing, [Adnan] writes Krista another letter and he’s so changed. By this time, he’d fired Gutierrez over the Asia letters and he’s being represented by a public defender he doesn’t really know. Adnan tells the guy [Dorsey] he wants to tell the court he did not kill Hae and that he is going to continue to fight this until the end. That’s what he says in his letter to Krista, and [Dorsey] says "No, no, no, terrible idea. Don’t say you’re innocent, it will anger the judge.” Adnan argues with [Dorsey], and according to Adnan, [Dorsey] says, “Well you can do it if you want but you’re just going to fuck yourself over.”
  

Thursday, July 6, 2000

• Jay's Sentencing Hearing. Jay receives a suspended sentence, not the two years prison per the plea agreement.
  
  • Case Information Sheet
  • Criminal Information Sheet
  • Stephanie and Jay have been broken up for over a year. But she is present in courtroom.
  • Adnan's appeal argues that if the trial jury had known Jay would get probation only, they would have thought this motivated Jay to lie. The defense implies that Jay knew he wasn't going to prison. But Jay didn't know. Jay thought he would get five years -- two, at the minimum.

Friday, July 28, 2000

• Public Defender Charles Dorsey files motion for modification of Adnan's sentence. The 2011 supplement to the petition for post conviction relief claims that Dorsey wasted Adnan's one chance for sentence modification, and should have waited.

Wednesday, August 2, 2000

• Judge Heard denies motion for sentence modification

August, 2000

• Jay owns a motorcycle, and the registration expires during this month

September 13, 2000

• 5PM: Jay is pulled over because the tags on his motorcycle have expired.

Sunday, October 15, 2000

• Hae Min Lee 20th Birthday

Monday, October 16, 2000

• Adnan writes to Rabia about Stephanie.
  

  Adnan has been thinking a lot about Stephanie and thinks that Stephanie knows something, or could shed a light on things. Adnan isn't comfortable reaching out to Stephanie. So, he has asked Krista to help. But, Krista doesn't really like Stephanie. Adnan doesn't feel comfortable writing questions for Krista to ask Stephanie. So, he's going to have Krista come visit, and tell Krista - in person - what to ask Stephanie. Then Krista will reach out to Stephanie via email, and act as a go-between Stephanie and Adnan. Adnan wants to make sure Rabia knows this is why there is a girl on his visitors list. Apparently, girls have wanted to visit Adnan before, but he didn't want his mother to cross paths with any female visitors.
  

February 28, 2001

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for two years

Monday, May 21, 2001

• Adnan's 20th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan begins working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: at Jessup, Adnan had a good job. He was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier. Being an entrepreneurial sort he ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

Thursday, May 24, 2001

• Gutierrez was disbarred on May 24, 2001, at the age of 50.
  

  The state Court of Appeals ordered her "disbarred by consent" May 24, after Gutierrez agreed to resign rather than fight complaints filed against her with the state Attorney Grievance Commission...
  

June 2, 2001

• Baltimore Sun: Lawyer Gutierrez agrees to disbarment - byline Sarah Koenig
  

  "As she got progressively sicker, she found it increasingly hard to make communications with the clients," Pettit said. "I never got any indication that there was any kind of error or incompetence. It was all about her being sick."
  

Thursday, July 19, 2001

• Baltimore Sun: Attorney is drawing numerous complaints - byline Sarah Koenig
  

  Over 20 people filed claims against Gutierrez with the Clients' Security Trust Fund
  

  • Tanveer says Adnan's family didn't see this article, or they might have filed, too.
  • Rabia says that Adnan knew all about this fund and applied to get reimbursed, but was denied.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

• Unrelated: Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center in New York City, while a third smashes into The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda. In total 2,996 people are killed.

Wednesday, September 19, 2001

• Adnan's Honda has been returned to his family.

Wednesday, September 25, 2001

• Despite the fact that Adnan has been regularly writing to Krista, Adnan writes to Saad that wants to start writing to non-Muslims.

Monday, October 15, 2001

• Hae Min Lee 21st Birthday

January 15, 2002

• Adnan writes Rabia about (1) prayer, (2) a time before his dad started "losing it," (3) how Saad's car was stolen with a bunch of TVs inside, (4) how he hasn't been molested in prison. Adnan wants to know why Rabia and Saad don't visit him any more.

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

• Adnan's Appeal Brief filed by Attorney Warren A. Brown Issues raised:
  
  • Prosecutorial misconduct & Brady rule
  • Did court prevent Adnan from presenting evidence
  • Hearsay based on prejudicial nature of Hae's letter
  • Admission of Hae's diary
  • No mention of Asia's letters.

Thursday, February 28, 2002

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for three years.

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

• State's Response to Adnan's Appeal

May 6, 2002

• Adnan write Rabia about the pending appeal decision.
  

  He tells Rabia that oral arguments are scheduled for June 3, and even though Adnan's Dad will be there, Adnan asks Rabia if she will please go. Adnan writes that he really needs Rabia and that Warren A. Brown is an asshole. Adnan says that he understands Rabia is studying for the bar, has an ongoing custody dispute, and is job-hunting. It's okay if she's too busy because he knows she would come if she could.
  

Spring, 2002

• WHS Class of 2002 prints a Memorial to Hae in their yearbook.

June 3, 2002

• Oral arguments heard with respects to Adnan's appeal.

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

• Adnan's 21st Birthday
  
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.
• Undated 2002 photo of Adnan visited by Rabia and Saad
  

September, 2002

• Approximate: Thiru Vignarajah begins attending Harvard Law School

Tuesday, October 15, 2002

• Hae Min Lee 22nd Birthday

February 28, 2003

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for four years.

Monday, March 19, 2003

• Adnan's Appeal Denied by Justice John J. Bishop, Jr..
  
  • Justice John J. Bishop, Jr. Bio
  • Adnan's petition for post conviction relief should have been filed within one year of this date.
  • Inexplicably, Adnan waited seven years between this date and filing for post conviction relief. Maryland law allows no more than 10 years from sentencing to file for PCR. Asia's affidavit was obtained in 2000.
  • Rabia wrote in her book that Adnan felt burned by the system, exhausted of funds, and didn't want to use up his last available option. He wanted to hold onto hope.
  • In 2014, after the first two episodes of Serial were released, Rabia lied to the readers of her blog. She told them that Adnan was forced to wait 10 years to apply for post conviction relief. But Rabid knew that Adnan could file in 2003, and she knew why he waited. In 2014, Rabia didn't want anyone to know that spending seven years in prison doing nothing was Adnan's choice, and strategy.

Date Unknown

• Adnan files a Pro Se petition for Writ of Certiorari. In 2004, Adnan wrote Rabia that he filed this himself, and it was denied.

Wednesday, May 21, 2003

• Adnan's 22nd Birthday
  
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

June 20, 2003

• The Court of Appeals denies Syed's Pro Se petition for Writ of Certiorari.

August/September, 2003

• Approximate: C. Justin Brown -- who graduated Cornell University in 1992, enrolls in the University of Maryland, School of Law. [Does anyone know the exact date?]

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

• Hae Min Lee 23rdBirthday

Thursday, January 29, 2004

• Cristina Gutierrez date of death (heart attack)

Approximate, 2004

• Asia is working for JMP and moonlighting as a stripper. She is eventually fired from JMP for poor performance. Court filing here here.
  
• According to Justin Brown: Adnan's family took possession of Gutierrez's defense files at some point in 2004, after Gutierrez passed away. Brown says that he took possession of copies of Gutierrez's files in 2009. For at least five years, Adnan's family had sole custody of the defense file. Hence the term: "the remnants of the defense file."
  
• According to Adnan's July 2009 letter to Rabia, at some point in 2004, Chris Flohr recommended the firm Nathans & Biddle for his application for post conviction relief.
  

February 28, 2004

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for five years.

March 1, 2004

• Thiru Vignarajah named President of the Harvard Law Review

Friday, May 21, 2004

• Adnan's 23rd Birthday
  
  • Approximate: In the Spring of 2004, Adnan gets a cell phone. Over the next five years, Adnan has several cell phones. At least one of the phones was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

July, 2004

• By July of 2004, if not earlier, Asia has hired an attorney to represent her as she seeks to sue her former employer for discrimination.

July 27, 2004

• Baltimore Sun re; Jada Lambert's killer: DNA match results in conviction in 1998 rape, murder

Friday, September 24, 2004

• Adnan receives Fundraiser Participation Award
  
• Adnan receives Volunteer Activity Coordinator's Award
  

Friday, October 15, 2004

• Hae Min Lee 24th birthday

Sunday, November 28, 2004

• Adnan writes Rabia:
  
  • He is going to wait as long as possible to file for Post Conviction Relief. He wants to take nine years to research his case, and then hire a post conviction lawyer.
  • [Ten years later, in 2014, Rabia lied to readers of her blog, writing that Adnan had to wait ten years before he could file for PCR.]
  • He is not going to pursue the brain mapping idea presented by Chris Flohr.
  • [Rabia writes in her book that they didn't pursue this brain mapping idea because Justin Brown wouldn't want anything distracting from the PCR. Trouble is, Justin Brown didn't graduate from law school until 2005, and wasn't Adnan's attorney until years after the decision was made not to pursue brain mapping.]

Thursday, December 2, 2004

• Testing:
  
  • Adnan's blood and hair out for testing
  • Reason for testing?

Monday, December 6, 2004

• Adnan's blood and hair returned to evidence.

December 24, 2004

• Having retained an attorney in the summer of 2004, Asia McClain files a lawsuit against her former employer, James M Pleasants Company, alleging that she had been discriminated against her on the basis of race, and retaliated against for complaining about racial discrimination in the workplace. Court filing here.

January 2, 2005

• Asia stops communicating with the attorney she has engaged to represent her in her lawsuit against JMP.
  
• Approximate: Thiru is a clerk for United States Circuit Court Judge Guido Calabresi
  

February 28, 2005

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for six years.

April 20, 2005

• Hae's fingernails, hair, and swabs out for testing.

April 21, 2005

• Hae's fingernails, hair, and swabs returned to evidence. Not out long enough to test. Taken out by mistake?

April 28, 2005

• Asia and James M. Pleasants company submit a joint rule report. On an unknown date, Asia acknowledged that she was moonlighting as an exotic dancer from 9pm-3:30am on days when she worked for JMP.
  
• This issue is not that Asia worked as a stripper.
  

May 2, 2005

• A "rule order" is entered by the Court in the matter of Asia's lawsuit against JMP.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

• Adnan's 24th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for a year, and gets a new t-mobile cell phone. This is his second cell phone. He uses the first cell phone to call T-mobile customer support when he can't get the t-mobile cell phone to work. At least one of the phones was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

June 3, 2005

• Asia's attorney withdraws based on the fact that he hasn't heard from Asia since January 1, 2005.

June, 2005

• Approximate: Thiru Vignarajah graduates Harvard Law.
  
• Approximate: C. Justin Brown graduates from University of Maryland School of Law. [Does anyone know the exact date?]
  
• Approximate: After graduating law school, C. Justin Brown clerks for Andre M. Davis, U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. [Does anyone know the exact date?]
  

Saturday, October 15, 2005

• Hae Min Lee 25th birthday

Saturday, December 9, 2005

• Adnan receives Certificate of Appreciation
  
• Adnan receives Distinguished Gentleman Award
  

January, 2006

• Thiru clerks for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer

February 2, 2006

• Asia's lawsuit is dismissed as neither her attorney, the court, nor the defendant has heard from her since January of 2005.
  
  • [Asia] has failed to respond to JMP's Motion to Dismiss in any way, after she was warned by the Court that failure to respond or participate would result in dismissal of this action. Given [Asia's] complete failure to respond or participate meaningfully in this case and her violation of the Court’s orders, the Court concludes that dismissal pursuant to Rules 37 and 41 is appropriate, and that no less drastic sanction would be effective.

February 28, 2006

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for seven years.
  
• Approximate: At some point in 2006, Justin Brown passes the Maryland State Bar Exam. Exact month unknown. Bar exams are given in February and July. [Does anyone know the exact date?]
  

Sunday, May 21, 2006

• Adnan's 25th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for two years. At least one of the phones he has had was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

September, 2006

• Approximate: C. Justin Brown begins working at Nathans & Biddle as an Associate. [Does anyone know the exact date?]

Saturday, September 2, 2006

• Adnan receives Fundraiser Participation Award at Jessup.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

• Since prison officials still don't know about the cell phone, Adnan receives Certificate of Achievement for going three years without an infraction.
  
• Adnan receives Volunteer Activity Coordinator Award at Jessup.
  

Sunday, October 15, 2006

• Hae Min Lee 26th birthday

January, 2007

• Thiru clerks for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer

February 28, 2007

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for eight years.

Monday, May 21, 2007

• Adnan's 26th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for three years. At least one of the phones he has had was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates. Over eight years, he is able to save up $10,000.00
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

Monday, October 15, 2007

• Hae Min Lee 27th birthday

December 4, 2007

• Since prison officials still don't know about the cell phone, Adnan receives Certificate of Achievement for three years of being infraction free.
  
• Approximate: Thiru finishes two years of as clerk for United States Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer
  

January 13, 2008

• At Jessup, Adnan Receives Devoted Program Supporters Award Certificate
  
• Since prison officials still don't know about the cell phone and hustles, Adnan receives Certificate of Appreciation for being "infraction free" for three years.
  

January/February, 2008

• Kandra / Adnan's Wife:
  
  • Approximate: Adnan sends Kandra $10,000.00 - Rabia doesn't hear about this until it has already happened.
  • Approximate: Kandra visits Adnan and they are married by another inmate. Rabia doesn't hear about this until it has already happened.
  • Kandra begins helping Adnan with his case by doing computer searches and making copies.

February 28, 2008

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for nine years.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

• Adnan's 27th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for four years. At least one of the phones he has had was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates.
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

• Baltimore Police Officer Lee emails Nathans & Biddle's C. Justin Brown: An item in evidence may have been destroyed. (Is this DNA?)

Saturday, October 15, 2008

• Hae Min Lee 28th birthday

Saturday, December 13, 2008

• Adnan receives Devoted Program Supporters Award in Jessup.

February 28, 2009

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for ten years.
  
• Photo of Adnan after ten years in prison
  

May, 2009-Approximate

• According to this letter, Justin Brown left Nathans & Biddle in the Spring of 2009, to start his own firm.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

• Adnan's 28th Birthday
  
  • Approximate: Adnan has had a cell phone for five years. At least one of the phones was smuggled in by a guard, in the hollowed out handle of a drill.
  • Approximate: According to Rabia, Adnan is still working hustles like making photocopies, trading, getting medicine, books and other contraband for other inmates.
  • Approximate: According to Sarah Koenig: Adnan was a clerk in the Chaplain's Office which gave him access to a computer, and to a printer and copier... He ran a couple of side businesses, printing stuff and making copies for people.

June 9, 2009

• Adnan's attorney - Justin Brown - and Asia's future attorney - Gary Proctor - work together, on an unrelated case. This filing does not mention Nathans & Biddle. Does this indicate that by July of 2009, Justin Brown was no longer employed by Nathans & Biddle? [Does anyone know the exact date Justin Brown left Nathans & Biddle and started his own firm?]

June 20, 2009

• Adnan writes to Rabia that he has been moved to Supermax, in Cumberland, and no longer has the use of a cell phone.
  
• Adnan's 10/24/2016 request for bail indicates Adnan was cited for having a cellular phone in 2009. In SERIAL, Sarah Koenig said Adnan had a cell phone for five years.
  
• Kandra has only been able to visit Adnan four times during the year they were "married." After Adnan is moved to Supermax/Cumberland, Kandra never sees Adnan again.
  

July 14, 2009

• Adnan writes to Rabia that Larry Nathans will charge $30,000.00 just to look at transcripts. Adnan reminds Rabia that Larry Nathans was referred by Chris Flohr in 2004.
  
• Adnan writes that Justin Brown took the lead, then left Nathans & Biddle and started his own firm (about two months ago), and can charge Adnan less because of overhead.
  

Thursday, October 15, 2009

• Hae Min Lee 29th birthday

Winter, 2009

• Approximate: Justin Brown has said that he began working on Adnan's case in late 2009, while still at Nathans & Biddle.
  
  • This conflicts with the letter that Adnan wrote Rabia in July of 2009. In that letter Adnan says that Justin Brown took the lead on Adnan's case while at Nathans & Biddle, and started his own firm "about two months before" July of 2009.
  • Approximate: Justin Brown says that he took possession of copies of the defense files in 2009. [He did not say the month or date.]
  • Justin Brown is at least the 10th defense attorney to work on Adnan's case.
  • Unsubstantiated: Justin Brown filed a petition based on Asia's March 2005 affidavit, arguing that Adnan's trial might have gone another way if Gutierrez had checked out Asias' story. [No record of this affidavit exists.]

February 28, 2010

• Adnan has been in jail/prison for eleven years.

Early/Mid 2010

• Approximate: Justin Brown was still working for Nathans & Biddle in late 2009. This conflicts with the letter Adnan wrote to Rabia in July of 2009: That Justin Brown already started his own firm.

April 11, 2010

• Events described by various parties as follows:
  
  • Urick first PCR: Before Asia called him, he didn't know about the PCR motion. She was concerned if she had to come out here. I explained to her, I was not her attorney. But I told her that she would have to be served. And if she was served, and if they made the proper arrangements, she would have to show up.
  • Serial, Episode 1: Asia's fiancé comes to the door, opens it part way, tells the investigator that she cannot speak to Asia, but that from what he knows of Adnan's case, Adnan is guilty and deserved the punishment he got.
  • Rabia: Adnan’s PI returns with terrible news. Asia won’t testify. The PI never spoke to her, but her fiance made it very clear, in a very nasty way that suggested an anti-Muslim prejudice, that Asia would not be involved and to leave them alone . . . Faced with a tough decision, [Justin Brown] decides to submit [Asia's] letters but not subpeona her for the appeal hearing.
  • Asia Affidavit: In the late spring of 2010, I learned that the Syed defense team was attempting to contact me. I was initially caught off guard by this and did not talk to them.
  • 2016 PCR: Asia testified that her husband met the PI outside, then came inside and told her he thought it was about that girl that got killed. That she asked her husband to take the man's card, but she didn't talk to him. That she looked up the case on the internet, and called Kevin Urick. Asia says these are the notes she took during her April 11, 2010 conversation with Urick. Asia testified that Urick convinced her Adnan was guilty and that Brown was trying to play the system.

End of May, Approximate

• According to Rabia, Justin Brown asks Adnan to take a polygraph test to determine the likelihood that he is lying about having asked Gutierrez for a plea deal. According to Rabia, Adnan passes.

Friday, May 21, 2010

• Adnan's 29th Birthday.

[Post Conviction Timeline II>>]()

Hi, I've been looking to rent a car for a trip soon and noticed amex canada's travel site only shows Budget (bug?) as a rental car company while going through the american website shows a lot more options. Anyone know if booking through the american side would cause any issues?
Looking to rent through enterprise and I could go through expedia or something but would rather use amex's site. Also not sure why but my card shows up as a Gold card on the american site but I've got a cobalt lol. Would this cause any insurance related issues? Will call Amex for confirmation but wondering if anyone has booked through the american site.

((Credit goes to the one and only u/SpacePaladin15 for his Nature of Predators story upon which this is based! Still getting used to the formatting, but I think I am getting the hang of it!))
FIRST // PREVIOUS // NEXT
Memory transcription subject: Arxur exchange subject Syle
Date [standardized human time]: October 20, 2136
I don’t know which was a bigger pain in my tail. Jack, the shots, or these gnashing seats! There is nowhere for my tail to go and this cheap helicopter keeps bouncing all over the place! Sure, we had to use a civilian model to hide something was up, but could they at least have brought in a fancy one!
Ah well. The view is fantastic though. Gorgeous mountains as far as the eye could see. The valley was full of little towns and cities here and there, but it was mostly forest! One human called it a “park,” but my translator didn’t really have much to say about it. All I knew is that I had rarely seen so much green in my life!
Soon we went towards one of the taller mountains deeper in the wooded areas. Jack said something about being in his family a very long time, about how the park grew around it, and more but I couldn’t give a venlil shit about it yet. I was just busy… looking.
All my missions had been in cities since my small size let me hunt better there. Sure there were some hunts and collections that took place in more sparsely populated areas like this, but I never got to see them. Didn’t help I hatched on a ship and spent pretty much my whole life spacebound.
Soon we settled into a long, but pretty thin grassy area by a house. There was a long road made of loose rocks going down the mountains nearby and at the other end of the grass was a bunch of metal, wood, and more with a large pile of dirt and wood behind them. The house itself was HUGE! At least by my standards. It had two super large bay doors on one side, a wooden covered platform to stand guard, two floors with one huge window, and a orange-red stone pipe on the side pointing up, probably so one could have a fire inside. The sides were clearly made of trees stacked on their sides. A “log cabin” the pilot said.
Well, it's my home now. I wonder who else lives here? Its a barracks big enough for quite a few families.
As we climbed out of the helicopter I kept expecting someone to come out, but nobody did. “Hey Jack! Who else lives here?” I screamed out as the helicopter slowly lifted away. Gnashing thing was as loud as a krakotl! “Just me!” He called back as the helicopter floated away.
“Venlil shit. Who else?” I turned to him and crossed my arms. No way this complex was for one man!
“You now.” He said with a shrug as he walked to the door. He had changed into those blue pants and the small top that humans called a “t-shirt.” His other clothes and gear had been put in his car. “No really! I know its big, but hey, inheritance.” He bared his teeth in that “smile” andmade an odd noise. Laughing? “Welcome home. Besides, not like the gov would want anyone else knowing you are here. The basement is full of junk and guns and shit. Don’t worry about that. Upstairs is just my study and office.”
The first room was rather large. It had a TV, a place for a fire, a large and long chair made of animal skin, and a bunch of devices by the TV. In the next room was a kitchen that was far larger than I was used to. I read that humans prefer to “cook” food, but didn’t expect there to be so many tools to do it with.
“Rooms are down the hall.” He explained as he sat down on the long chair with a grunt. “Ohhh fuck yes. Here. Take a seat.” He patted the skin chair by himself and I sat down on the far side of it.
Oh. OH. Oh betterment this is heaven! The chair is cold, yes, but I thought it was just bloated! It was like sitting on what I thought a bed made of venlil fur felt like! I hissed and let my eyes close as I sunk into its embrace. As I relaxed for… probably the first time in my life really I listened and heard nothing.
No screaming sentients being butchered or eaten.
No tiny brained hunters arguing.
No engine or mechanical noises.
Silence besides some animals and the wind.
I could feel the long chair move a bit as the human clearly wanted to talk to me, but he didn’t. He let me just relax for awhile before getting up and leaving me in this bliss. I could feel my tail curling before I started to feel the cold air tickle my scales. Before I could complain though I heard doors opening and shutting followed by a smell.
FOOD.
My eyes shot open in time to see the human walking in with a bowl of red meat. Fresh. Red. Meat. I paused and looked up at him. This was a whole day’s rations. No! TWO days rations! In one bowl! I didn’t even know what it was from!
“It's just some cuts of venison I was planning on making a stew out of later. Nothing too fancy. OH! That is deer by the way. Non sentient.” He explained before putting the whole bowl in my lap. “It's not cooked or seasoned, but figured you would want something simple to start with.” He explained before sitting back down.
Mine? MINE!
Chunk after chunk of meat met my mouth. My teeth tearing into the soft, cold flesh. It was the best meat I had ever tasted in my LIFE! No taste of the fear, no shame of knowing something that thought suffered for this, and the taste alone! I had no words! I hissed as my tail went nuts. I ate and ate until the bowl was empty.
But by the prophet I was full. No. The prophet, betterment, hunters, it could all ROT for all I care! I closed my eyes again and relaxed. The human could slit my throat right now and I would be okay. My belly was full for the first time in my life. Not only that, but it was full of meat I didn’t feel horrible about. The chair I was in was the best thing I had ever sat on and nobody was screaming near me or looking for a reason to call me defective.
Did one of those shots kill me? This was too good to be life!
He let me lay there for a bit, my tail happily thumping as he started to set up a fire. Soon the room was warm with wonderful smells as well. This. This was almost too much.
Two of what humans called hours passed and I woke back up with a happy hiss. The night was starting to fall and the human was relaxed by me in looser fitting clothing that looked soft. I was covered in a blanket that felt like it was woven out of venlil fur and somehow the chair had tilted back and raised up the bottom to hold my feet and legs up.
He was tapping away on his datapad before looking over at me with a grin. “Hey, how do you feel?” He asked before looking back to his pad. His voice was soft, gentle, and sure even I could pick up on his amusement, but like rot I was going to care.
“Mmmf. Amazing.” My noises were… not intimidating at all, but for some reason he stiffened just a little. Weird, but it is my human. “If all the species in the galaxy knew of life like this I bet humans would have lines volunteer for even slavery.” I chuckled a bit before closing my eyes.
“Hm… probably not the slavery bit, but I do live comfy out here.” He chuckled a bit. “Hey, I am talking to random aliens on this app and a krakotl has the username “Firebird.” She is an exterminator so she just combined her job with what her species is. Gunna tell her about the mythical beast the phoenix.” He was already acting so casually around me. Guess seeing me sleep for so long made him drop his guard.
Not going to ruin this for ANYTHING though. Want more.
Wait. “Wait? You said a Krakotl exterminator? They are willing to talk to you? YOU are willing to talk to THEM after what they did to your kind?” I sat up and the chair returned to its normal setup. My eyes locked on his, there was no way he would be chatting with something like that!
“Yup.” He raised and lowered his shoulders again before tapping the top of his pad. “She didn’t attack us, just some crazy asshole of the same species. She wants to learn more about predators actually.” He explained. “It would be like me blaming you for what happened with the cradle. I read your empathy tests by the way. I know you didn’t like it.” His voice was calm, slow, gentle. Casually explaining to me he was talking with someone who should be both our enemy! Then again, I should be his. But here I am, just waking up from a short sleep on his comfy long-chair after he fed me.
Gnash it. Not going to worry about it.
“So… human… What are your plans for me?” I finally asked. No way he was just going to take me in like this without some sort of hard labor planned for me.
“Well. tonight and tomorrow get you settled in and teach you about human living.” Here it comes. The labor. “Then I will start setting you up with hunting lessons so you can help me hunt while I show you more things humans like.”
That wasn’t labor, that was more relaxing!
“So wait.” I pointed a claw at him as I narrowed my eyes. This was too good. “You just want to relax with me, teach me about human things, and spend time with me?”
His head moved up and down. “Yup. This is an exchange program. Not the prisoner kind either. We are here to learn about each other’s species. That, and make sure you don’t die.” He made that soft laughing noise again.
I sat back in the long chair again and stared at the ceiling. “So you have an Arxur female just in her prime, and you want to just… relax with her? You could do anything you want, make me do anything you want, and you just want to live with her?” I could barely believe it.
“Yup.” He nodded. “We don’t believe in slavery as humans. Fought wars to end it even.” He then went quiet for a few moments as his eyes went wide.
“Wait. FEMALE!?” He yelled out in clear surprise.
He didn’t know I was a girl!?
FIRST // PREVIOUS // NEXT

The whirring blades of my MD-902 throbbed against the warm evening air, and I smiled.
From 5,000 feet, the ground flew by in a carpet of dark forests and kelly-green fields. The sun hung low on the horizon in a picturesque array of dazzling orange and gold, and I could make out the narrow strip of the Ohio River to my left, glistening in the fading daylight. This time of year, the trees would be full of the sweet aroma of fresh blossoms, and the frequent rains kept small pockets of fluffy white mist hanging in the treetops. It was a beautiful view, one that reminded me of why being a helicopter pilot trumped flying in a jumbo jet far above the clouds every day of the week.
Fourteen more days, and I’m debt free.
That made me grin even more. I’d been working as a charter pilot ever since I obtained my license at age 19, and after years of keeping my nose to the grindstone, I was closing on the final payment for real-estate in western Pennsylvania. With no debt, a fixer-upper house on 30 rural acres all to myself, and a respectable wage for a 26-year-old pilot, I looked forward to the financial freedom I could now enjoy. Maybe I’d take a vacation, somewhere exotic like Venice Italy, or the Dominican Republic. Or perhaps I’d sock the money back for the day I started a family.
“Remember kleineun, a real man looks after his own.”
My elderly ouma’s voice came back from the depths of my memories, her proud, sun-tanned face rising from the darkness. She and my Rhodesian grandfather had emigrated to the US when they were newlyweds, as the violence against white Boer descendants in South Africa spiraled out of control. My mother and father both died in a car crash when I was six, and it had been my grandparents who raised me. Due to this, I’d grown up with a slight accent that many of my classmates found amusing, and I could speak both English, and Afrikaans, the Boer tongue of our former home.
I shifted in my seat, stretched my back muscles, and glanced at the picture taped to my console. Both my parents flanked a grinning, gap-toothed six-year-old me, at the last Christmas we’d spent together. My mother beamed, her dark hair and Italian features a sharp contrast to my father’s sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. Sometimes, I liked to imagine they were smiling at me with pride at how well I flew the old silver-colored bird my company had assigned to me, and that made the long, lonely flights easier to bear.
A flicker caught my eye, and I broke my gaze away from the photograph.
Perched in its small cradle above the controls, my little black Garmin fuzzed over for a few seconds, its screen shifting from brightly colored maps to a barrage of grey static.
Did the power chord come loose?
I checked, ensuring the power-cable for the unit’s battery was plugged into the port on the control panel. It was a brand-new GPS unit, and I’d used it a few times already, so I knew it wasn’t defective. Granted, I could fly and navigate without it, but the Garmin made my time as a pilot so much easier that the thought of going blind was dreadful.
My fuel gauge danced, clicked to empty, then to full, in a bizarre jolt.
More of the gauges began to stutter, the entire panel seeming to develop terrets all at once, and my pulse began to race. Something was wrong, very wrong, and the sludge inside my bowels churned with sour fear.
“Come on, come on.” I flicked switches, turned dials, punched buttons, but nothing seemed to fix the spasming electronics. Every gauge failed, and without warning, I found myself plunged into inky darkness.
Outside, the sun surrendered to the pull of night, the sky darker than usual. A distant rumble of thunder reverberated above the roar of my helicopter’s engine, and I thought I glimpsed a streak of yellowish lightning on the far horizon to my left.
Calm down Chris. We’re still flying, so it must just be a blown fuse. Stay in control and find a place to set her down.
My sweaty palm slid on the cyclic stick, and both feet weighed heavy on the yaw pedals. The collective stuck to my other hand with a nervous vibration, and I squinted against the abyss outside.
Beep.
I jumped despite myself, as the little Garmin on my panel flared back to life, the static pulling aside to reveal a twitching display. Each time the screen glitched, it showed the colorful map detailing my flight path over the ground below, but I noticed that some of the lines changed, the names shifting, as if the device couldn’t decide between two different versions of the world.
One name jutted out at me, slate gray like most of the major county names, appearing with ghostly flickers from between two neighboring ones.
Barron County.
I stared, confused. I’d flown over this section of southeastern Ohio plenty of times, and I knew the counties by heart. At this point, I should have been over the southern end of Noble County, and maybe dipping lower into Washington. There was no Barron County in Ohio. I was sure of it.
And yet it shown back at me from the digital landscape, a strange, almost cigar-shaped chunk of terrain carved from the surrounding counties like a tumor, sometimes there, sometimes not, as my little Garmin struggled to find the correct map. Rain began to patter against my cockpit window, and the entire aircraft rattled from a strong gust of wind. Thick clouds closed over my field of vision like a sea of gray cotton.
The blood in my veins turned to ice, and I sucked in a nervous breath.
Land. I had to land. There was nothing else to do, my flight controls weren’t responding, and only my Garmin had managed to come back to life. Perhaps I’d been hit by lightning, and the electronics had been fried? Either way, it was too dark to tell, but a storm seemed to be brewing, and if I didn’t get my feet on the ground soon, I could be in real trouble.
“Better safe than sorry.” I pushed down on the collective to start my slow descent and clicked the talking button for my headset. “Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, over.”
Nothing.
“Any station, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, requesting emergency assistance, over.”
Still nothing.
If the radio’s dead, I’m really up a creek.
With my hand shaking, I clicked on the mic one more time. “Any station, this is—”
Like a curtain pulling back, the fog cleared from around my window, and the words stuck in my throat.
Without my gauges, I couldn’t tell just how far I’d descended, but I was definitely very low. Thick trees poked up from the ground, and the hills rolled into high ridges with flat valley floors, fields and pastures pockmarking them. Rain fell all around in cold, silvery sheets, a normal feature for the mid spring in this part of Ohio.
What wasn’t normal, were the fires.
At first, I thought they were forest fires for the amount of smoke and flames that bellowed from each spot, but as I swooped lower, my eyes widened in horror.
They were houses.
Farms, cottages, little clusters that barely constituted villages, all of them belched orange flames and black pillars of sooty smoke. I couldn’t hear above the helicopter blades, but I could see the flashes on the ground, along the road, in between the trees, and even coming from the burning buildings, little jets of golden light that spat into the darkness with anger.
Gunfire. That’s rifle fire, a whole lot of it.
Tiny black figures darted through the shadows, barely discernable from where I sat, several hundred feet up. I couldn’t see much, but some were definitely running away, the streaks of yellow gunfire chasing them. A few dark gray vehicles rumbled down one of the gravel roads, and sprayed fire into the houses as it went. They were fighting, I realized, the people in the trucks and the locals. It was horrific, like something out of war-torn Afghanistan, but worse.
Then, I caught a glimpse of the others.
They didn’t move like the rest, who either fled from the dark vehicles, or fired back from behind cover. These skinny figures loped along with haphazard gaits, many running on all fours like animals, swarming from the trees by the dozens. They threw themselves into the gales of bullets without flinching, attacking anyone within range, and something about the way they moved, so fluid, so fearless, made my heart skip a beat.
What is that?
“Echo Four Actual to unknown caller, please respond, over.”
Choking back a cry of shock, I fumbled at the control panel with clumsy fingers, the man’s voice sharp and stern. I hadn’t realized that I’d let go of the talking button and clicked it down again. “Hello? Hello, this is Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot out of Pittsburgh, over.”
An excruciating moment passed, and I continued to zoom over the trees, the fires falling away behind me as more silent forest took over.
“Roger that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, we read you loud and clear. Please identify yourself and any passengers or cargo you might be carrying, over.”
Swallowing hard, I eyed the treetops, which looked much closer than they should have been. How far had I descended? “Echo Four Actual, my name is Christopher Dekker, and I am alone. I’m a charter flight from PA, carrying medical equipment for OSU in Columbus. My controls have been damaged, and I am unable to safely carry on due to the storm. Requesting permission to land, over.”
I watched the landscape slide by underneath me, once catching sight of what looked like a little white church surrounded by smaller huts, dozens of figures in the yard staring up at me as I flew over a nearby ridgeline.
“Solid copy on that Douglass Three-One-Four-Foxtrot. Be advised, your transponder shows you to be inside a restricted zone. Please cease all radio traffic, reduce your speed, climb to 3,000 feet and proceed north. We’ll talk you in from there. How copy, over?”
My heart jumped, and I let out a sigh of relief. “Roger that Echo Four Actual, my altimeter is down, but I’ll do my best to eyeball the altitude, over.”
With that, I pulled the collective upward, and tried my best to gauge how far I was by eyesight in the gathering night, rain still coming down all around me. This had to be some kind of disaster or riot, I decided. After all, the voice over the radio sounded like military, and those vehicles seemed to have heavy weapons. Maybe there was some kind of unrest going on here that I hadn’t heard about yet?
Kind of weird for it to happen in rural areas though. Spoiled college kids I get, but never saw farmers get so worked up before. They usually love the military.
Something moved in the corner of my eye, and I turned out of reflex.
My mouth fell open, and I froze, unable to scream.
In the sky beside me, a huge shadow glided along, and its leathery wings effortlessly carved through the gloom, flapping only on occasion to keep it aloft. It was too dark for me to see what color it was, but from the way it moved, I knew it wasn’t another helicopter. No, this thing was alive, easily the size of a small plane, and more than twice the length of my little McDonald Douglass. A long tail trailed behind it, and bore a distinct arrow-shaped snout, with twig-like spines fanned out around the back of its head. Whatever legs it had were drawn up under it like a bird, yet its skin appeared rough and knobby, almost resembling tree bark. Without pause, the gigantic bat-winged entity flew along beside me, as if my presence was on par with an annoying fly buzzing about its head.
Gripping the microphone switch so tight, I thought I’d crack the plastic, I whispered into my headset, forgetting all radio protocol. “T-There’s something up here.”
Static crackled.
“Douglas Three-One-Four-Foxtrot, say again your last, you’re coming in weak and unreadable, over.”
“There’s something up here.” I snarled into the headset, still glued to the controls of the helicopter, afraid to deviate even an inch from my course in case the monstrosity decided to turn on me. “A freaking huge thing, right beside me. I swear, it looks like a bat or . . . I don’t know.”
“Calm down.” The man on the other end of the radio broke his rigorous discipline as well, his voice deep, but level. “It won’t attack if you don’t move too fast. Slowly ease away from it and follow that course until you’re out of sight.”
I didn’t have time to think about how wrong that sounded, how the man’s strict tone had changed to one of knowledge, how he hadn’t been the least surprised by what I’d said. Instead, I slowly turned the helicopter away from the huge menace and edged the speed higher in tiny increments.
As soon as I was roughly two football fields away, I let myself relax, and clicked the mic switch. “It’s not following.”
“You’re sure?”
Eyeing the huge flapping wings, I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me. “Yeah, I’m well clear.”
“Good. Thank you, Mr. Dekker.”
Then, the radio went dead.
Something in my chest dropped, a weight that made my stomach roil. This wasn’t right, none of it. Who was that man? Why did he know about the thing I’d just seen? What was I supposed to—
A flash of light exploded from the trees to my right and shot into the air with a long finger of smoke.
What the . . .
On instinct, I jerked the cyclic stick to one side, and the helicopter swung to avoid the rocket.
Boom.
My world shook, metal screeched, and a dozen alarms began to go off inside the cockpit in a cacophony of beeps and sirens. Orange and red flames lit up the night sky just behind me, and the horizon started to spin wildly outside. Heat gushed from the cockpit door, and I smelled the greasy stench of burning oil. The safety belts dug into my shoulders, and with a final slip, the radio headset ripped free from my scalp.
I’m hit.
Desperate, I yanked on the controls, fought the bird even as she spun toward the ground in a wreath of flames, the inky black trees hurtling up to meet me. The helicopter went into full auto-rotation, the sky blurring past outside, and the alarms blared in a screech of doom. Panic slammed through my temples, I screamed at the top of my lungs, and for one brief second, my eyes locked on the little black Garmin still perched atop my control panel.
Its screen stopped twitching and settled on a map of the mysterious Barron County, with a little red arrow at the center of the screen, a few words popping up underneath it.
You are here.
Trees stabbed up into the sky, the belts crushed at my torso, glass shattered all around me, and the world went dark.
Copper, thick, warm, and tangy.
It filled my mouth, stank metallic in my nose, clogged my throat, choking me. In the murkiness, I fought for a surface, for a way out, blind and numb in the dark.
This way, kleineun.
My ouma’s voice echoed from somewhere in the shadows.
This way.
Both eyes flew open, and I gagged, spitting out a stream of red.
Pain throbbed in my ribs, and a heavy pressure sent a tingling numbness through my shoulders. Blood roared inside my temples, and stars danced before my eyes with a dizzying array. Humid night air kissed my skin, and something sticky coated my face, neck, and arms that hung straight up toward the ceiling.
Wait. Not up. Down.
I blinked at the wrinkled, torn ceiling of the cockpit, the glass all gone, the gray aluminum shredded like tissue paper. Just outside the broken windows, thick Appalachian bluegrass and stemmy underbrush swished in a feeble breeze, backlit by flashes of lightning from the thunderstorm overhead. Green and brown leaves covered everything in a wet carpet of triangles, and somewhere nearby, a cricket chirped.
Turning my head from side to side, I realized that I hung upside down inside the ruined helicopter, the top half burrowed into the mud. I could hear the hissing and crackling of flames, the pattering of rain falling on the hot aluminum, and the smaller brush fires around the downed aircraft sizzling out in the damp long grass. Charred steel and burning oil tainted the air, almost as strong as the metallic, coppery stench in my aching nose.
They shot me down. That military dude shot me out of the sky.
It didn’t make sense. I’d followed their orders, done everything they’d said, and yet the instant I veered safely away from whatever that thing in the sky had been, they’d fired, not at it, but at me.
Looking down (or rather, up) at my chest, I sucked in a gasp, which was harder to do that before.
The navy-blue shirt stuck to my torso with several big splotches of dark, rusty red. Most were clean slashes, but two held bits of glass sticking out of them, one alarmingly bigger than the other. They dripped cherry red blood onto my upturned face, and a wave of nausea hit me.
I gotta get down.
I flexed my arms to try and work some feeling back into them, praying nothing was broken. Half-numb from hanging so long, I palmed along my aching body until I felt the buckled for the seat belts.
“Okay.” I hissed between gritted teeth, in an effort to stave off my panic. “You can do this. Just hold on tight. Nice and tight. Here we go . . .”
Click.
Everything seemed to lurch, and I slid off the seat to plummet towards the muck-filled hole in the cockpit ceiling. My fingers were slick with blood and slipped over the smooth faux-leather pilot’s seat with ease. The shoulder belt snagged on the bits of glass that lay just under the left lowest rib, and a flare of white-hot pain ripped through me.
Wham.
I screamed, my right knee caught the edge of the aluminum ceiling, and both hands dove into a mound of leaf-covered glass shards on the opposite side of the hole. My head swam, being right-side-up again enough to make shadows gnaw at the corner of my eyes.
Forcing myself to breath slowly, I fought the urge to faint and slid back to sit on the smooth ceiling. I turned my hands over to see half a dozen bits of clear glass burrowed into my skin like greedy parasites, red blood weeping around the new cuts.
“Screw you.” I spat at the rubbish with angry tears in my eyes. “Screw you, screw you, screw you.”
The shards came out easy enough, and the cuts weren’t that deep, but that wasn’t what worried me. On my chest, the single piece of cockpit glass that remined was almost as big as my palm, and it really hurt. Just touching it felt like self-inflicted torture, but I knew it had to come out sooner or later.
Please don’t nick a vein.
Wiping my hands dry on my jeans, I gripped the shard with both hands, and jerked.
Fire roared over my ribs, and hot blood tickled my already grimy pale skin. I clapped a hand over the wound, pressing down hard, and grunted out a string of hateful expletives that my ouma would have slapped me for.
Lying on my back, I stared around me at the messy cargo compartment of the MD-902. Most of the medical supplies had been in cardboard boxes strapped down with heavy nylon tow-straps, but several cases had ruptured with the force of the impact, spraying bandages, syringes, and pill bottles all over the cluttered interior. Orange flames chewed at the crate furthest to the rear, the tail section long gone, but the foremost part of the hold was intact. Easily a million-dollar mess, it would have made me faint on any other trip, but today it was a godsend.
Half-blind in the darkness, I crawled along with only the firelight and lightning bolts to guide me, my right knee aching. Like a crippled raccoon, I collected things as I went, conscious of the two pallets of intact supplies weighing right over my head. I’d taken several different first-aid courses with some hunting buddies of mine, and the mental reflexes kicked in to help soothe my frazzled mind.
Check for bleeds, stop the worst, then move on.
Aside from my battered chest and stomach, the rest of me remained mostly unharmed. I had nasty bruises from the seatbelts, my right knee swelled, my nose slightly crooked and crusted in blood, but otherwise I was intact. Dowsing every scratch and cut with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol I found, I used butterfly closures on the smaller lacerations that peppered my skin. I wrapped soft white gauze over my abused palms and probed at the big cut where the last shard had been, only stopping when I was sure there were no pieces of glass wedged inside my flesh.
“Not too bad.” I grunted to myself, trying to sound impassive like a doctor might. “Rib must have stopped it. Gonna need stitches though. That’ll be fun.”
Pawing through the broken cases, I couldn’t find any suture chord, but just as I was about to give up, I noticed a small box that read ‘medical skin stapler’.
Bingo.
I tore the small white plastic stapler free from its packaging and eyeballed the device. I’d never done this before, only seen it in movies, and even though the cut in my skin hurt, I wondered if this wouldn’t be worse.
You’ve gotta do it. That bleeding needs to stop. Besides, no one’s coming to rescue you, not with those rocket-launching psychos out there.
Taking a deep breath, I pinched the skin around the gash together, and pressed the mouth of the stapler to it.
Click.
A sharp sting, like that of a needle bit at the skin, but it didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the cut itself. I worked my way across the two-inch laceration and gave out a sigh of relief when it was done.
“Not going to bleed to death today.” I daubed ointment around the staples before winding more bandages over the wound.
Popping a few low-grade painkillers that tumbled from the cargo, I crawled wriggled through the nearest shattered window into the wet grass.
Raindrops kissed my face, clean and cool on my sweaty skin. Despite the thick cloud cover, there was enough constant lightning strikes within the storm to let me get glimpses of the world around me. My helicopter lay on its back, the blades snapped like pencils, with bits and pieces of it burning in chunks all around the small break in the trees. Chest-high scrub brush grew all around the low-lying ground, with pockets of standing water in places. My ears still rang from the impact of the crash, but I could start to pick up more crickets, frogs, and even some nocturnal birds singing into the darkness, like they didn’t notice the huge the hulk of flaming metal that had fallen from the sky. Overhead, the thunder rumbled onward, the feeble wind whistling, and there were other flashes on the horizon, orange and red ones, with crackles that didn’t sound quite like lightning.
The guns. They’re still fighting.
Instinctively, I pulled out my cellphone, and tapped the screen.
It fluttered to life, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get through to anyone, not even with the emergency function designed to work around having no service. The complicated wonder of our modern world was little better than a glorified paperweight.
Stunned, I sat down with my back to the helicopter and rested my head against the aluminum skin of the craft. How I’d gone from a regular medical supply run to being marooned in this hellish parody of rural America, I didn’t know, but one thig was certain; I needed a plan. Whoever fired the missile could have already contacted my charter company and made up some excuse to keep them from coming to look for me. No one else knew I was here, and even though I now had six staples holding the worst of my injuries shut, I knew I needed proper medical attention. If I wanted to live, I’d have to rescue myself.
My bag. I need to get my go-bag, grab some gear and then . . . head somewhere else.
It took me a while to gather my green canvas paratrooper bag from its place behind the pilot’s seat and fill it with whatever supplies I could scrounge. My knee didn’t seem to be broken, but man did it hurt, and I dreaded the thought of walking on it for miles on end. I focused instead on inventorying my gear and trying to come up with a halfway intelligent plan of action.
I had a stainless-steel canteen with one of those detachable cups on the bottom, a little fishing kit, some duct tape, a lighter, a black LED flashlight with three spare batteries, a few tattered road maps with a compass, a spare pair of socks, medical supplies from the cargo, and a simple forest green plastic rain poncho. I also managed to unearth a functioning digital camcorder my ouma had gotten me for Christmas a few years back, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to do any filming in such a miserable state. Lastly, since it was a private supply run from a warehouse area near Pittsburgh to a direct hospital pad in Ohio, I’d been able to bring my K-Bar, a sturdy, and brutally simple knife designed for the Marine Corps that I used every time I went camping. It was pitiful in comparison to the rifle I wished I had with me, but that didn’t matter now. I had what I had, and I doubted my trusty Armalite would have alleviated my sore knee anyway.
Clicking on my flashlight, I huddled with the poncho around my shoulders inside the wreck of the chopper and peered at the dusty roadmaps. A small part of me hoped that a solution would jump out from the faded paper, but none came. These were all maps of western PA and eastern Ohio. None of them had a Barron County on them anywhere.
The man on the radio said to head north, right before they shot me down. That means they must be camped out to the north of here. South had that convoy and those burning houses, so that’s a no-go. Maybe I can backtrack eastward the way I came.
As if on cue, a soft pop echoed from over the eastern horizon, and I craned to look out the helicopter window, spotting more man-made flashes over the tree tops.
“Great.” I hissed between clenched teeth, aware of how the temperature dipped to a chilly 60 degrees, and how despite the conditions, my stomach had begun to growl. “Not going that way, are we? Westward it is.”
Walking away from my poor 902 proved to be harder than I’d anticipated. Despite the glass, the fizzling fires, and the darkness, it still held a familiar, human essence to it. Sitting inside it made me feel secure, safe, even calm about the situation. In any other circumstance, I would have just stayed with the downed aircraft to wait for help, but I knew the men who shot me down would likely find my crash site, and I didn’t want to be around when they did.
Unlike much of central and western Ohio, southeastern Ohio is hilly, brushy, and clogged with thick forests. Thorns snagged at my thin poncho and sliced at my pant legs. My knee throbbed, every step a form of self-inflicted torture. The rain never stopped, a steady drizzle from above just cold enough to be problematic as time went on, making me shiver. Mud slid under my tennis shoes, and every tree looked ten times bigger in the flickering beam of my cheap flashlight. Icy fear prickled at the back of my neck at some of the sounds that greeted me through the gloom. I’d been camping loads of times, both in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, but these noises were something otherworldly to me.
Strange howls, screeches, and calls permeated the rain-soaked sky, some almost roars, while others bordered on human in their intonation. The more I walked, the softer the distant gunfire became, and the more prevalent the odd sounds, until the shadows seemed to fill with them. I didn’t dare turn off my flashlight, or I’d been completely blind in the dark, but a little voice in the back of my head screamed that I was too visible, crunching through the gloomy forest with my long beam of light stabbing into the abyss. It felt as though a million eyes were on me, studying me, hunting me from the surrounding brush, and I bitterly recalled how much I’d loved the old Survivor Man TV series as a kid.
Not so fun being out in the woods at night. Especially alone.
A twig snapped somewhere behind me, and I whirled on the spot, one trembling hand resting on the hilt of my K-Bar.
Nothing. Nothing but trees, bushes, and rain dripping down in the darkness.
“This is stupid.” I whispered to myself to keep my nerves in check as I slowly spun on the spot. “I should have went eastward anyway. God knows how long I’m going to have to—”
Creak.
A groan of metal-on-metal echoed from somewhere to my right, and I spun to face it, yanking the knife on my belt free from its scabbard. It felt so small and useless in my hand, and I choked down a wave of nauseas fear.
Ka-whump. Creak. K-whump. Creak.
Underbrush cracked and crunched, a few smaller saplings thrashed, and from deep within the gloom, two yellow orbs flared to life. They poked through the mist in the trees, forming into slender fingers of golden light that swept back and forth in the dark.
The soldiers . . . they must be looking for me.
I swallowed hard and turned to slink away.
Ice jammed through my blood, and I froze on the spot, biting my tongue to stop the scream.
It stood not yards away, a huge form that towered a good twelve feet tall in the swirling shadows. Unpolished chrome blended with flash-rusted spots in the faded red paint, and grime-smeared glass shone with dull hues in the flashes of lightning. Where the wheels should have been, the rounded steel axels curved like some enormous hand had bent them, and the tires lay face-down on the muddy ground like big round feet, their hubcaps buried in the dirt. Dents, scrapes, and chips covered the battered thing, and its crooked little radio antenna pointed straight up from the old metal fender like a mast. I could barely make out the mud-coated VW on the rounded hood, and my mind reeled in shock.
Is . . . is that a car?
Both yellow headlights bathed me in a circle of bright, blinding light, and neither I nor the strange vehicle moved.
Seconds ticked by, the screech-thumping in the background only growing closer. I realized that I couldn’t hear any engine noises and had yet to see any soldiers or guns pointed my way. This car looked old, really old, like one of those classic Volkswagen Beetles that collectors fought over at auctions. Try as I might, I couldn’t see a driver inside the murky, mold-smeared windows.
Because there wasn’t one.
Lightning arched across the sky overhead, and the car standing in front of me blinked.
Its headlights slid shut, as if little metal shades had crawled over the bulbs for a moment and flicked open again. Something about that movement was so primal, so real, so lifelike, that every ounce of self-control I had melted in an instant.
Cursing under my breath, I lunged into the shrubs, and the world erupted around me.
Under my shoes, the ground shook, and the car surged after me in a cacophony of ka-thumps that made my already racing heart skip several beats. A weather-beaten brown tow truck from the 50’s charged through the thorns to my left, it’s headlights ablaze, and a dilapidated yellow school bus rose from its hiding place in the weeds to stand tall on four down-turned axel-legs. They all flicked their headlights on like giants waking from their slumber, and as I dodged past them, they each blared their horn into the night in alarm.
My breaths came short and tight, my knee burned, and I crashed through thorns and briars without thought to how badly I was getting cut up.
The cheap poncho tore, and I ripped it away as it caught on a tree branch.
A purple 70’s Mustang shook off its blanket of creeping vines and bounded from a stand of trees just ahead, forcing me to swerve to avoid being run over, my adrenaline at all-time highs.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.
Slipping and sliding, I pushed through a stand of multiflora rose, and stumbled out into a flat, dark expanse.
I almost skidded to a stop.
What had once been a rather large field stood no taller than my shoestrings, the grass charred, and burnt. The storm above illuminated huge pieces of wreckage that lay scattered over the nearly 40-acre plot, and I could just make out the fire-blackened hulk of a fuselage resting a hundred yards away. The plane had been brought down a while ago it seemed, as there weren’t any flames left burning, and I threw myself toward it in frenzied desperation.
Burned grass and greasy brown topsoil slushed underfoot, and I could hear the squelching of the cars pursing me. Rain soaked me to the bone, and my lungs ached from sucking down the damp night air. A painful stich crept into my side, and I cursed myself for not putting in more time for cardio at the gym.
Something caught my left shoelace, and I hurtled to the ground, tasting mud and blood in between my teeth.
They’ve got me now.
I clawed at the mud, rolled, and watched a tire slam down mere inches from where my head had been. The Mustang loomed over me and jostled for position with the red Volkswagen and brown tow truck, the school bus still a few yards behind them. They couldn’t seem to decide who would get the pleasure of stomping me to death, and like a herd of stampeding wildebeest, they locked bumpers in an epic shoving match.
On all fours, I scampered out from under the sparring brutes, and dashed for the crumpled airplane, a white-painted DC-3 that looked like it had been cut in half by a gargantuan knife blade. I passed a snapped wing section, the oily remains of a turbo-prop engine, and a mutilated wheel from the landing gear. Climbing over a heap of mud, I squeezed into the back of the ruined flight cabin and dropped down into the dark cargo hold.
Wham.
No sooner had my sneakers hit the cold metal floor, and the entire plane rocked from the impact of something heavy ramming it just outside. I tumbled to my knees, screaming in pain as, once again, I managed to bash the sore one off a bracket in the wall.
My hand smeared in something gooey, and I scrabbled for my flashlight.
It clicked on, a wavering ball of white light in the pitch darkness, and I fought the urge to gag. “Oh man . . .”
Three people, or what was left of them, lay strewn over the narrow cargo area. Claret red blood coated the walls, caked on the floor, and clotted under my mud-spattered shoes. Bits of flesh and viscera were stuck to everything, and tatters of cloth hung from exposed sections of broken bone. An eerie set of bloody handprints adorned the walls, and the only reason I could tell it had been three people were the shoes; all of them bore anklebones sticking out above blood-soaked socks. It smelled sickly sweet, a strange, nauseas odor that crept into my nose and settled on the back of my tongue like an alien parasite.
Something glinted in the beam of my flashlight, and my pulse quickened as I pried the object loose from the severed arm that still clung to it.
“Hail Mary full of Grace.” I would have grinned if it weren’t for the fact that the plane continued to buck and roll under the assault from the cars outside.
The pistol looked old, but well-maintained, aside from the light coating of dark blood that stained its round wooden handle. It felt heavy, but good in my hand, and I turned it over to read the words, Waffenfabrik Mauser stenciled into the frame, with a large red 9 carved into the grip. For some reason, it vaguely reminded me of the blasters from Star Wars.
I fumbled with a little switch that looked like a safety on the back of the gun and stumbled toward a gap in the plane’s dented fuselage to aim out at the surrounding headlights.
Bang.
The old gun bucked reliably in my hand, its long barrel spitting a little jet of flame into the night. I had no idea if I hit anything, but the attacking cars recoiled, their horns blaring in confusion.
They turned, and scuttled for the tree line as fast as their mechanical legs could go, the entire ordeal over as fast as it had begun.
Did I do that?
Perplexed, I stared down at the pistol in my hand.
Whoosh.
A large, inky black shadow glided down from the clouds, and the yellow school bus moved too slow to react in time.
With a crash, the kicking nightmarish vehicle was thrown onto its side, spraying glass and chrome trim across the muddy field. Its electro-synth horn blared with wails of mechanical agony, as two huge talon-like feet clamped down on it, and the enormous head of the flying creature lowered to rip open its engine compartment.
The horn cut out, and the enormous flying entity jerked its head back to gulp down a mass of what looked like sticky black vines from the interior of the shattered bus.
At this range, I could see now that the flying creature bore two legs and had its wings half-tucked like a vulture that had descended to feed on roadkill. Its head turned slightly, and in the glow of another lightning bolt, my jaw went slack at the realization of what it was.
A tree trunk. It’s a rotted tree trunk.
I couldn’t tell where the reptilian beast began, and where the organic tree components ended, the upper part of the head shaped like a log, while the lower jaw resembled something out of a dinosaur movie. Its skin looked identical to the outside of a shagbark hickory but flexed with a supple featheriness that denoted something closer to skin. Sharp branch-like spines ranged down its back, and out to the end of its tail, which bore a massive round club shaped like a diseased tree-knot. Crouched on both hind legs, it braced the hooked ends of its folded wings against the ground like a bat, towering higher than a semi-truck. Under the folds of its armored head, a bulging pair of chameleon-like eyes constantly spun in their sockets, probing the dark for threats while it ate.
One black pupil locked onto the window I peered through, and my heart stopped.
The beast regarded me for a moment, making a curious, sideways sniff.
With a proud, contemptful head-toss, the shadow from the sky parted rows of razor-sharp teeth to let out a roar that shook the earth beneath my feet. It was the triumphant war cry of a creature that sat at the very top of the food chain, one that felt no threat from the fragile two-legged beings that walked the earth all around it. It hunted whenever it wanted, ate whatever it wanted, and flew wherever it wanted. It didn’t need to rip the plane apart to devour me.
Like my hunter-gatherer ancestors from thousands of years ago, I wasn’t even worth the energy it would take to pounce.
I’m hiding in the remains of the cockpit now, which is half-buried under the mud of the field, enough to shield the light from my screen so that thing doesn’t see it. My service only now came back, and it’s been over an hour since the winged beast started in on the dead bus. I don’t know when, or how I’m going to get out of here. I don’t know when anyone will even see this post, or if it will upload at all. My phone battery is almost dead, and at this point, I’m probably going to have to sleep among the corpses until daylight comes.
A dead man sleeping amongst friends.
If you live in the Noble County area in southeastern Ohio, be careful where you drive, fly, and boat. I don’t know if it’s possible to stumble into this strange place by ground, but if so, then these things are definitely headed your way.
If that happens . . . pray that they don’t find you.

Hi all,
I am planning to rent a car at the John Paul II Kraków-Balice airport, and I was looking at some of the companies available there. I've noticed Sixt and Enterprise, but I was wondering if there are less-known companies that operate from there. The main reason for the car is that I plan to drive to Austria for a week.

1. Are there any other reputable rental companies at the airport?
2. I was reading on Reddit and other reviews that its best to get the rental insurance vs whatever is being offered from my credit card just for ease of mind. Do you if you do get the insurance from the company, do they still take the deposit?
3. I've read about car net, car wiz, and Green Motion, but reviews are mixed about these companies. Some people are saying they are great, while others swear they had the worst experience with these companies. Any suggestion?

I do know that there is a cross-border charge on top of the final price of the rental too.
Thank you all for the answers.
P.S.
I've posted in /krakow as well but realized that here there might be more people who might provide additional suggestions.

Hi all,
​
I am planning to rent a car at the John Paul II Kraków-Balice airport, and I was looking at some of the companies available there. I've noticed Sixt and Enterprise, but I was wondering if there are less-known companies that operate from there. The main reason for the car is that I plan to drive to Austria for a week.

1. Are there any other reputable rental companies at the airport?
2. I was reading on Reddit and other reviews that its best to get the rental insurance vs whatever is being offered from my credit card just for ease of mind. Do you if you do get the insurance from the company, do they still take the deposit?
3. I've read about car net, car wiz, and Green Motion, but reviews are mixed about these companies. Some people are saying they are great, while others swear they had the worst experience with these companies. Any suggestion?

I do know that there is the cross-border charge on top of the final price of the rental too.
​
Thank you all for the answers.

Some hours later, the colony’s power was back on as everything had mostly been cleaned up. Everyone was still a little shaken, especially as heavily armed soldiers patrolled through the halls, however now Khan was holding a meeting in the multipurpose room. Uzi, Thad, N and V were in the audience as the MTF team stood to the side with Red. Clef and Shaw were standing on the stage next to Khan.
Khan went to the mic on top of a stage before he spoke. “Hello everyone, as you know things have been…. Well you know. Anyways because our lovely colony is currently being cleaned and patrolled by our…. Hold on.” Khan then pulled out a piece of paper and read it aloud. “Benevolent benefactors…. Huh.”
Jane looked towards Aron who was smiling. “Did you give him a script?” Jane said.
“Yep. Best decision I ever made.” Aron replied. Jane rolled her eyes.
“Hmmm…. Pass the mic to Clef…. OH right sorry.” Khan said as he looked at the paper and gave Clef the mic.
“So what me and the foundation have decided is that now you will all be sent on a nice campaign trip to one of the few woods that isn’t infested with 939 instances…. Mostly. Just keep out of the nearby caves and ignore the voices and you’ll be fine. Anyway we already have the jeeps set up, mostly because the bus you were using is actually an instance of scp 2086…. I personally don’t know how any of you are still alive. Damn thing killed twelve men.” Clef said as he handed the mic to Shaw.
“Howdy everybody!” Shaw started in an enthusiastic voice. He waited for the crowd to say something as everyone stayed silent. “Ok…. We’ll Clef told you what you're doing, however I wanted to add something! The brave MTF at Alpha 1 will be your councilors! Mostly because they're the only ones qualified to deal with the things in there but hey that’s not important! Anyway back to the point, your councilors will be alpha 1 like I said, however because we don’t have enough people volunteering, N and V have graciously decided to step up!”
“WHAT!” V said as she stood up. “I NEVER AGREED TO THIS!”
“You're right! You didn’t! I made the decision for you!” Shaw said.
“Ummm…. Mr Shaw, I also didn’t get news of this.” N said as he raised his hand.
“It’s ok! You don't even have to do anything! I already made your outfits!!!!” Shaw said enthusiastically as he held out two camp uniforms.
“He got them from a couple of skeletons by the way, so if you feel wet while in them just know it’s because said skeletons were inside a 939.” Clef said.
“THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT!” Shaw yelled. “Just have fun! Now get on those buses people! Yaaaaaaa! This is gonna be so much fun for you, aren't you excited?!?”
“Not at all.” Uzi said.
“Same here, this whole camp thing seems a little too excessive.” Red replied.
“Did I mention there’s a reward for whoever keeps the most WD’s alive- I mean uhhh…. Happy?” Shaw said.
“What kind of reward are we talking about….” V said as she sat back down.
“Ahhh…. You know…. Stuff.” Shaw said with a smile.
“A ton of motor oil.” Clef said. “For humans a ton of cash.”
“OH COME ON! STOP SPOILING THE SURPRISE!” Shaw yelled.
“So wait…. Why motor oil?” Cole asked as he turned to Gram.
“Motor oil is, In simple terms, beer for MD’s and WD’s. Highly intoxicating.” Gram replied.
“Huh, no wonder V is suddenly all for this.” Aron said. “She probably drinks a lot of it I bet.”
“Hey! I heard that!” V said from the audience. “Just so you know I’ve only drank it once! It was pretty sweet…. Wait, that reminds me…. Where is that other drone…. Fennec?” V looked around.
“She’s in the truck, she called the one with N in it and refuses to leave it until he gets on for some reason. No one can get her out so we’re rolling with it.” Jane replied.
“H-Hey, can I speak?” Thad said.
“Yes you can. Do you have a question?” Shaw said.
“Uh ya. What's 939?” Thad said.
“Oh golly I was hoping you would say that!” Shaw said now practically beaming.
“Dammit what have you done?!?” Clef said, annoyed. “Now we're gonna be here for thirty minutes….”
A half hour later, and everyone had packed their things and we’re going into one of the trucks, it was the middle of the night, the trucks had open canopies above them. The trucks were also colored black with the foundation logo on their sides. They were driven by one of the MTF, or N and V. When N got into his truck Fennec was already in the passenger side.
“Hellllloooo!” Fennec said enthusiastically. “We’re going camping!!!!”
“Yes we are! I’m a little nervous. I've never camped before….” N said as he put his hands on the steering wheel. “Or maybe it’s because I’ve never driven anything before….”
Meanwhile Uzi got on her truck with Thad and a couple more WD’s. However Lizzy was also on board.
“Wait…. Aren’t you supposed to be in the prison sector?” Thad said as he looked at Lizzy.
“She was let out for good behavior, and proving that she wasn’t a threat.” Jane said over the integrated intercom as she was about to drive the truck.
“We’ll…. Don’t try anything. Got it.” Uzi said, trying to intimidate Lizzy.
“I know.” Lizzy said as she set her backpack beside her.
“So is everyone ready?” Jane said as she spoke over the intercom.
“Yea. We’re ready.” Uzi said with a sigh as she tried to get comfortable.
“Then off we go.” Jane replied.
Red was in her own truck with a bunch of WD’s, Aron and Cole were driving it. The trucks had already started on the road. Gram was also in the back doing something on his tablet.
“So…. Cards?” Red said as she pulled out a deck of cards.
“Yea!” One WD said.
“Ohh! Are we doing Uno or Go fish?” A female WD piped up.
“I'll call first!” Another said.
“Slow down guys, geez, anyway it's Uno, I have enough cards for everyone so let’s get started!” Red said as she started to pass out the cards to the delight of the WD’s.
As the trucks drove through the harsh night of copper 9. Snow blew all around the trucks as curious WD’s peaked and saw the many sights of the planet.
Uzi’s truck saw a group of 745’s as Jane had called them, they were watching the truck from a building. As the truck went past,
One WD said. “Wow! Why do their heads glow like that?”
“They glow because their heads are bioluminescent, on earth it was to mimic the headlights of a car before ramming a person off the road and most likely eating them. However there is some evidence they just hunt for sport.” Jane said over the intercom.
“Cool!” Another WD, said.
On N, V, and Fennec’s truck they were barely keeping steady as V was squished between N and Fennec.
“Just keep your eyes on the road and drive ok?” V said, sighing.
“I-I know! I think…. Hold on, I got this!” N said.
“I believe in you!” Fennec said.
As N drove, the truck ran over tons of small hills, it even went into the air a couple times. However all was good as they finally made it to the outskirts of the city and into a smoother road.
After a long time of driving, all the trucks finally made it to the woods. Uzi was sleeping on Thad’s shoulder as everyone else in her truck was also sound asleep. Until suddenly a gunshot awoke all of them. As Uzi grabbed her railgun and looked widely, the other WD’s ducked for cover. However Uzi heard laughter behind her, looking behind herself to see Jane wielding a smoking pistol.
“UGH BITE ME!” Uzi said in annoyance as she got off the truck, the other now wide awake WD’s did the same. “What? It was funny!” Jane said, still chuckling to herself.
Meanwhile the WD’s in N, V, and Fennec’s truck were already awake and shaken, they got off as quickly as possible as N had managed to drive into a tree. He got off holding his head as V got off and slapped him.
“KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD!” V yelled.
“Hey! Don’t yell at him like that! He was trying his best!” Fennec replied to V.
“Ya, his best to kill us!” V said.
“Hmph! Let’s go N she obviously doesn’t want us here!” Fennec said as she forcefully grabbed N’s wrist, V followed them anyway as she rolled her eyes.
Meanwhile Red had gotten off her truck laughing and joking with a female WD named Rebecca.
“Oh man I can’t believe you beat me!” Red said as she looked at Rebecca.
“Yea, I’m pretty good at cards.” She replied. “Oh also, just so you know this is my boyfriend!” Rebecca then pulled a male WD with sunglasses closer to her. He waved at Red.
“Aww you are so cute together!” Red said.
“Thanks!” Darren replied as Rebecca smiled.
“Hey, before we go our separate ways, I just wanted to say that if you need to go outside the camp for some ‘alone time’ I’ll be happy to help.” Red said with a wink before she left with a smile.
After five minutes, all the WDs, Red, Jane, Aron, Cole, and Gram had gathered in front of the lodges waiting and wondering wherever the MDs had walked off to while the wind and snow blew around them and the snow slightly building up on everyone’s clothes as they stood there.
“So uhhh, do we just start or….” Aron said.
“No, we have to wait for them. Orders from Shaw, we have to make sure everyone is here.” Jane replied. Red was considering pulling out one of the sets of cards again when suddenly three figures slammed down onto the ground in front of everyone, wings out along with their blades extended. It was N, V and Fennec, they were wearing camping uniforms Shaw had given them. They turned around to look at everyone, the yellow MD > “Jesus, could any of you be more threatening?!?” Red said.
“It was Fennec's idea.” V said.
“Welcome campers! Let’s sound off!” Said N as he looked up at everyone. “One, two….” N started as he counted the WD’s.
All the WD’s looked terrified. As none of them spoke. Suddenly V turned her right hand into a SMG and was about to shoot one of the WD’s, however before she could, Red tackled the WD down and out of the way of the bullet.
“WOAH WHAT THE FUCK!” Yelled Aron as he starred at V.
“…. What? I was just getting their attention.” V said as she looked around everyone.
“THAT'S how you get attention from people?!?” Red said as she stood up.
“…. Yes?….” V shrugged in confusion.
“Listen, I’m trying to get that prize alright? Just don’t go killing WD’s everywhere you look. Ok?” Red said.
“Jeez ok.” V said, rolling her eyes.
Every WD was stunned, however V just pointed her MP5SD at them again and without hesitation they all stood at full attention and said. “Present!”
“Ok! Great! That’s everyone! We have tons of activities planned! So don’t go sneaking off to investigate stuff!” N said as he slowly looked at Uzi a little.
“Also, you REALLY shouldn’t go out, trust me. The 939’s out here can and will eat you.” Aron said, stepping in front of the crowd. “As long as you don’t go out by yourself or listen to the voices at night you’ll be fine.”
“Wait, you didn’t clear them out?” Red said as she looked at Aron.
“We tried, lost an entire squad to one of them. So now we just decided to hand out rules…. It’s simple, just don’t go outside…. At all…. I’m serious, you will die a horrible drawn out death.” Aron said as he stared at all the WD’s.
All the WD’s stood still. However then Thad and Lizzie came from the crowd and stood with N, V and Fennec.
“See, if those two are going with them, you can trust them as well! Sorta. Actually never mind, that's a horrible idea.” Cole said.
After a long and drawn out ten minutes of getting everyone organized. Jane, Aron, Cole, Gram, N, and V had their groups, Fennec was never assigned one so she went with N’s group.
Meanwhile Uzi was going by herself, she had a backpack with her as she went off into the woods, as she walked the snowy paths, trees surrounding her with the night sky above her. Suddenly she looked to her right to see a pack of 745’s were starting to surround her, Uzi however simply waved her hand at them as the strange symbol that marked her powers surrounded her hand. Suddenly the 745’s became much more calm as they all left as Uzi went back to walking. Continuing to walk through the Forest each footstep leaving a mark in the snow and a crunch from each one as well as the noise of wind blowing snow through the trees. Then Uzi noticed something odd. A pair of red glowing eyes were staring at her from the darkness. As she looked back to confirm their existence they were gone. Uzi shivered and seemed to disregard the sighting as she went towards the cabin.
As Uzi walked, the campgrounds were doing surprisingly fine, each cabin held one of the councilors doing a ‘fun’ activity with their group of WD’s.
Inside one was Jane’s group. Jane held her sniper rifle and had set up a makeshift shooting range, Jane was seemingly demonstrating something by hitting every target with a perfect headshot. Each target was a paper cut out of a silhouette with a Anderson robotics logo on its head.
“Ok so, does anyone else want to try their hand?” Jane said as her rifle smoked.
“Every WD in her group stayed silent before one raised their hand, it was Darren.
“You can do this!” Rebecca said.
Darren smiled as he took the rifle from Jane. He steadied himself and fired, however instead of hitting a target like he hoped. He instead fired the rifle directly out of his hands into the air. Jane caught the rifle mid air and shook her head as every other WD laughed. Darren quietly went back embarrassed.
Cole’s group was also inside their cabin, however, instead of doing any activities. Cole just sat in a chair at the corner.
“So…. What do we do?” One WD said.
“Hell if I know. I'm a soldier not a counselor, you know what screw this i'm going on patrol. You just do whatever you want.” Cole said as he got up and walked out with his shotgun.
As soon as Cole left, his cabin went into anarchy as every WD got up and started doing, as Cole said, whatever.
In Grams cabin the WD’s were disgusted to see a dead 745 flop down onto a table in the middle of the room.
“Today, we will be dissecting this 745 instance. Freshly killed by Jane when we got here. I’ll pass out the scalpels soon enough, make sure to get its organs and lay them out beside the body. Work as a team.” Gram said.
The WD’s looked at the body with disgust.
“If I can get sick…. Then I’m getting sick….” One WD said.
In Aron’s cabin it was something out of a boot camp. WD’s held up wooden sticks as they marched around the cabin, Aron walked around them yelling orders.
“Come on! Pick up the pace, green eyes! When I’m finished with you, you’ll all be considered foundation recruits! Be glad I haven't set up the course, yet!” Aron said.
“Y-Yes sir!” The WD’s said in perfect unison.
In N, V and Fennec's cabin. Which Red was also a part of. Red was exhausted and annoyed.
“Please…. STOP TRYING TO KILL THEM!” Red yelled at V.
“It’s the only way they’ll learn.” V replied.
“LIKE HELL! Sometimes I wonder why I even snuck on the truck…. I’m not even supposed to be here….” Red said.
“Wait, you weren't?” Fennec said before stumbling. “Then why are you here anyway?”
“Maybe it’s because she wanted to have fun! Like us! Right guys!” N said as he looked at the WD’s hiding in the corner, their eyes trained on V in fear.
“No, it’s because I snuck on. I was supposed to help out with repairs but hey, screw that. Connor managed to get me on board the trucks without much trouble.” Red replied.
“Wait, Connor? I haven’t heard from him in a long time.” V said, suddenly interested.
“Ya actually what has he been doing?” N said.
“Nothing really, he’s been in the back of the ship working on a pet project of his. I have no idea what that is but he says it’s too important to really say anything about it.” Red replied, shrugging.
“Huh, neat!” N said.
Meanwhile Fennec was in the corner with the WD’s, the WD’s looked terrified of her. Fennec then reached into her shirt to pull something out, as the WD’s prepared for the worst, Fennec then pulled out a green lizard-like animal, it looked two meters long from head to tail. It also had a long, thin body with eight pairs of narrow limbs. It looked to have compound eyes. It didn’t seem to mind as Fennec got it out of her coat as she held it in her arms.
“Hey Fennec, wait…. What’s that!” V yelled in surprise as she turned towards Fennec.
“Oh, I found him a couple years ago! I like him so I keep in my coat and let him rest there. He doesn’t seem to mind.” Fennec said.
“Huh, it looks kind of cute!” N said as he got closer. The WD’s also did the same in curiosity.
“You know, with the things I’ve seen, this is pretty normal. Somehow.” Red said as she shrugged.
N got closer to the green lizard thing, it then liked his visor. N backed his head away a little in shock. However he then giggled and said. “I like this thing. Can I hold him?”
“Sure!” Fennec said. “Anything for you!”
N then took the lizard from Fennec and held it in his arms as it liked his visor again to N’s delight, even V was intrigued by it even if her face didn’t show it.
Uzi however was dealing with things no man could explain. She was inside an abandoned cabin deeper in the woods. As she looked around, it was seemingly empty. There were little robotic bugs running around, doing things such as running away every time Uzi walked over.
Uzi rolled her eyes as she used her abilities to raise a flashlight above her head and turn it on. As she looked around everything looked mostly the same. Suddenly a noise from deeper inside the cabin suddenly resonated. Uzi switched her light to where the noise came from, as she watched. She suddenly saw a glimpse of what looked like a hand going back inside a corner. Uzi suddenly got startled and her flashlight dropped. As she caught it she heard another noise that sounded like a scream from outside. Uzi slowly went to the window and looked out of it.
However, it was just everyone else on the frozen lake, even though it was frozen Uzi could still see everyone one the ice messing around, some of the groups even had boats on the ice.
“This is…. Very underwhelming….” Red said as she was in a boat on the ice with N.
“We'll have to do something! Plus this is very cool!” N said as he went to the front of the boat and stood on it.
“And this is very cool!!” Fennec said as she sat on the back of the boat, the lizard keeping the WD’s happy as they played with it.
On N’s boat there were some more WD’s who were seemingly having fun, rowing the boat along the ice with oar’s. V’s boat also came up to N’s, her boat had a different strategy of doing things. V’s boat had her WD group holding it up. V along with Lizzie was on the top of it.
“Sabotage my minions! Plan X!” V yelled as one of the WD’s below her boat kicked N’s boat off course.
“As the WD’s in N’s boat started to rock. Rebecca suddenly said. “I-I can’t swim!” As she was about to fall onto the ice.
“…. It’s ice.” Red said as she looked at Rebecca. “You can’t swim on ice….” Red sounded a mix of disappointed and confused.
“Oh…. Right.” Rebecca said as she stedied herself on the boat. A little embarrassed.
“I should have never gone on this trip….” Red said to herself as she sighed.
Meanwhile V’s boat was starting to get ahead, however Red simply rolled her eyes and threw a coin she had in her pocket in front of V's boat. The WD holding it up in the front saw the coin and immediately went to pick it up.
“Ohhhh shiny!” He said as he bent down. However then the entire boat lost balance and fell.
V immediately used her wings to float above the crash as she rolled her eyes and looked at Red. Red had a smug expression on her face.
Then suddenly from the right came Aron’s boat, it was painted fully black with a white foundation insignia on its sides. The WD’s now wore wooden helmets, also painted black with the foundation insignia on them.
“I love working for the council!” Aron yelled from the front of the boat as the WD’s rowed with expert precision.
“I love working for the council!” The WD’s yelled back, also in perfect precision.
“Lets me know just who I am!” Aron said again.
“Let’s me know just who I am!” The WD’s said, repeating after Aron.
As Aron’s group passed N, and V’s groups they could only watch as they rowed their boat with military accuracy.
“Did you train them to be soldier’s or something?” V asked Aron as she flew closer.
“Your goddamn right! I’ve trained these WD’s to be soldier’s! When I get back I’ll be leading the first team of WD soldier’s the foundation has ever seen! Now repeat after me maggots!” Aron yelled back to his WD’s as he started the song over again.
All of a sudden, from behind Aron came a noise of what sounded like a car. As Aron turned around to the WD’s he saw Grams boat, it was not really a boat anymore.
Grams boat was now fully fitted with tires and all of the like. It was fully made and fully operational. It was more car than boat.
“Hello Aron.” Gram said as his car-boat passed Aron’s astonished group. N, Fennec and even V watched in awe as Grams' boat practically started to zoom around them in circles.
“H-How?!?” V said.
“Simple, intelligence.” Gram replied.
“Wait…. Where’s Cole?” N said as he looked around.
“Back at the bank of the river. They're still setting up.” Lizzy said with a chuckle as she pointed all the way to the bank, where Cole was trying his best to make his boat.
“It turns out anarchy isn’t a way to run something like that.” Lizzy said.
Meanwhile Uzi watched from the cabin window. Suddenly her face had the symbol of her powers for a split second on her right eye. The window shattered, Uzi immediately backed away, her visor showing a caution sign as she did so.
Uzi’s caution sign then had the words, ‘high heat’ on it as Uzi put down her backpack and looked inside. Inside it was a WD arm, as Uzi looked at the arm she was hyperventilating
Then all of a sudden an all too familiar voice came from behind Uzi.
“Uzi doorman, such a surprise seeing you here.” It said from behind her.
“W-Who-“ Uzi started as she turned around, however was shocked to see not N, V or anyone else. She saw Klen standing behind her, his hands in his coat as his eyes glowed a sickly red.
“Y-You!” Uzi said as she held out her hand with the symbol on it to fight Klen. However Klen just shook his head.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, heretic.” Klen said as he looked behind Uzi.
Uzi looked behind her to see what looked like a horde of fleshy abominations, they looked like they were once human, they all looked at Uzi. They made horrific noises as their flesh had seemingly been torn off. There was no sign of any kind of skin on any of their bodies.
“What do you want?” Uzi said as she looked back to Klen with some hints of fear.
“No no. It’s what you want my dear Uzi. For I have these that may interest you.” Klen then put his hand to its palm as he held it out, suddenly some tentacles came from the ground making a sizable hole, they rose holding up a WD corpse, the tentacles threw it aside as they went back down into the hole in the ground and pulled out three papers.
“This poor WD died alone, it’s a shame. I don’t even remember killing her. However she did write these. Read them, Uzi doorman.” Klen said as the tentacles passed the papers to Uzi.
The papers looked like drawings of a madman, however one of them was a paper from Anderson robotics. Uzi read it carefully and saw it was a notice of some kind. However there was another thing on it written in oil that said. ‘Lights from below’
Uzi turned it around to see a finger from something, perhaps a MD. Uzi took it off and studied it before Klen laughed.
“Enjoy your reading? heretic?” Klen said with a smile.
“Bite me!” Uzi said, looking at Klen with anger.
“Well that is no way to treat an old friend? Well I’ll have to punish you!” Klen said with a sneer.
Uzi started to prepare for the worst as she backed away from both Klen and his flesh creatures.
“Don't worry, I won’t do it myself, for that deed has already been taken. It will arrive shortly. Now Uzi, I hope to see your body in the snow, begging for mercy from yaldabaoth. However, you shall gain none!” Klen said with yet another sneer. Suddenly he and all his flesh creatures sunk into the ground, disappearing from view. As Uzi stared in disbelief at what just happened. She didn’t notice Doll behind her, watching her. Suddenly Doll disappeared before Uzi could even notice.
Then Uzi was suddenly knocked back by something plowing through the wall, knocking Uzi back into the front wall as she turned herself around to see what had happened.
In front of Uzi was a robot of some kind, it was bulky and had two Miniguns for its arms, its shoulders had what looked like small middle silos and it had large legs. As Uzi stared at this robot, it stared back at her with its head being a yellow light camera. Its head was mounted between its shoulder missile silos. Its shoulders had a strange logo Uzi had never seen before. They had the globe of earth colored a light blue on them with the words ‘Protection, Concealment, survival, education, destruction.’ In a circle around the blue globe.
“Absolute solver detected, calculating.” The robot said as it stared at Uzi. “Threat to sapient life if allowed to live. 70%. Course of action…. TERMINATION.” Its eye then glowed a menacing red.
“OH SH-“ Uzi was about to yell when suddenly the robot activated some kind of thrusters and charged at Uzi directly, Uzi reacted fast and activated her powers once again to make a shield with a large version of that symbol blocking in front of her.
However, that did almost nothing as the robot simply charged into the shield, knocking Uzi through the wall of the cabin. Uzi was knocked some ways away from the cabin as she got up from the snow, spitting some out and holding her head as she got up, she looked around and saw trees for miles and the cabin the distance, she must've been hit a mile away from it. Then she noticed the robot was already on its way surprisingly fast, in just a few short moments it was already in front of her.
Uzi immediately used her powers to try to directly target it. However when she tried her visor simply flashed a message. ‘Warning, cannot target.’
“Oh you have to be kidding me-“ Uzi said as suddenly the robot started to fire its miniguns at Uzi without any sense of remorse or emotion.
Uzi immediately used her powers to make a shield around herself as she fled behind a large boulder nearby. The robot started to slowly march to the other side of the boulder as it continued pelting it with its miniguns, slowly destroying Uzi’s cover.
As Uzi tried to think and started to panic, she looked around and saw a large tree nearby, Uzi had an idea. Uzi immediately used her powers to target the tree and with some effort managed to uproot it. As it floated Uzi was surprised even with herself, it was the largest thing she had lifted and she was doing it with ease like it was a metal pipe.
Uzi had no time to think as the robot finally got to the other side and started to fire on Uzi, however she thought quickly and threw the tree at the robot, it knocked it off balance and even somewhat dented it. However other than that it was unaffected.
Uzi immediately put her shield up just in time for the robot to start pelting her with bullets again as it walked closer to her. Suddenly it stopped to Uzi’s surprise. Instead its missile silos then fired what seemed like at least twenty small missiles at Uzi that looked like they were going around the shield.
Uzi immediately panicked and started to try to target the missiles with her other hand. Spikes came from the ground and pre-exploded almost every missile a safe distance away from Uzi, however a couple of them were going straight at Uzi, she was forced to tank them with her shield which immediately broke it and sent Uzi a few feet backwards. The robot wasted no time in firing again, as the bullets were about to hit Uzi she felt fear and panic for her life. Just then she started to fly in the air to dodge the bullets and started to fly away.
Uzi was surprised that she just did that, however she had no time to think as she looked behind herself and saw the robot also flying directly after her, worst of all it was aiming its miniguns and preparing to fire.
“DAMMIT, GO AWAY!” Uzi yelled as she uprooted multiple trees in the area and flung them at the robot, it was knocked down to the ground and, however that did little to stop it from going in the air again, however this time it must’ve put its thrusters to full because it flew faster than Uzi and charged directly into her like a charging bull.
As Uzi was flung out of the air even further away. She was knocked so far she made it to another building, this one was larger and made of actual concrete. It had a sign at the front that said ‘Visitor center’ but Uzi could care less at this moment.
As Uzi fled into the building landed outside and fired its missiles at Uzi to chase her within the building. As Uzi ran through the walls, making sure to knock things down behind her to stop the missiles. They kept coming expertly dodging whatever she threw at them. Then one of the missiles accidentally ran into a pillar as Uzi went around a corner fast into a large open area with a lot of support pillars. Its explosion took out the last few missiles as well as the tower. However it gave Uzi an idea as she looked at the building now shaking from it. Uzi started to smile.
As the robot came into a large open area with all the pillars, it looked around for Uzi and didn’t see her. It seemed confused as it looked again and scanned the area.
“Hey! You! I’m over here!” Uzi yelled as she came out from a pillar and waved her hands with a smirk. The robot didn’t hesitate as it fired its miniguns at her. Uzi however just ran back to the pillar and stayed behind it as the robot destroyed it with the hail of bullets. Then she moved into the next, and the next, and the next.
Uzi’s smile grew larger as more pillars started to fall and the building started to slowly crumble. Then she went behind one of the few pillar’s remaining as the robot fired at it, just as Uzi had hoped.
As the pillar was destroyed, it was the straw that broke the camel's back as all the other pillars started to collapse from the weight of the building practically falling on top of them.
Uzi immediately flew out of the building as fast as she could, the robot was about to follow when the building collapsed on top of it. Outside, Uzi barely made it. She looked behind herself, and after a few seconds of silence.
“HELL YA! I JUST DID THAT! THAT WAS ME!” Uzi yelled as she celebrated.
Just as Uzi was about to go back with a smile on her face. The robot started to slowly crawl from the rubble unnoticed, it was heavily damaged, wires were poking out as one of its arms was gone, it’s legs were missing and dents were all over its body.
“T-TTT-TT-TT-TTERMINATE.” It said as it glitched and sparked.
Uzi turned around just in time to see it just as it fired everything it had at Uzi, its minigun fired one last salvo as it fired whatever missiles it had left. Uzi could barely react In time as she set up her shield. However some bullets made it through and pierced her body, spilling oil on the snow as the missiles hit it and flung Uzi a few feet back as more bullets went into her. As Uzi laid on the ground now seemingly dead. The robot’s eye turned back to yellow.
“M-MM-MMMISSION CCCCCCC-CCCOMPLET. REEEETURRNING TO BASE.” It said as it started to crawl in a direction slowly.
However, Uzi's body started to change. She grew large black organic wings as she screamed in pure rage, the robot turned back confused. Standing over it was Uzi, but that was impossible, its calculations had said nothing could survive a salvo like that.
Uzi stared at the robot with uncaring eyes as her visor turned into a purple >< symbol. She immediately grabbed the robot's head and with strength she should’ve never had. She ripped it off, killing the robot instantly. She then flew back with her wings to the camp.
Meanwhile back at the camp everyone had finished the activities and were back in their cabins, surprising everyone had stayed alive. Mostly thanks to Red’s constant vigilance.
“I. Hate. You.” Red said exhausted as she looked at V.
V shrugged and said. “What? I was only doing what I know.”
“We’ll I had a great time!” Fennec said.
“Same here!” N said as he looked around.
“However I keep counting everyone and yet I don’t see Uzi…. Hmmm…. Wonder where she went?” N said as he looked around.
Meanwhile Rebbeca and Darren were going into the woods, Red had told them this path would lead them to a secluded place free of 939 or 745’s where they could make out peacefully.
“Wow, that Red girl sure knows her stuff.” Darren said as they made it to a small log house.
“I know right?!? She’s my new bestie hands down. Anyway, let's not waste anymore time.”
As they went inside it looked strange. There were some kind of black things on the walls and a flashlight on the ground. As Rebbeca went to pick it up. She suddenly felt a presence from above her. As she and Darren looked above themselves they saw what looked to be Uzi, however she had black organic wings and even a black organic tail that seemed to be alive as it had a face and jaws.
As Rebbeca and Darren starred in absolute horror at Uzi’s new form. Uzi was seemingly about to pounce and kill them, when suddenly a roar was heard from the opposite side of the room. Uzi, Darren and Rebbeca looked over and saw a creature, it looked quadrupedal and had a frog-like stance. It was blood red and had spikes running along its back, its snout was like an alligator and it seemed to have no eyes.
It looked at Uzi and roared again as it swiped in a show of force at Uzi. Uzi put her attention away from Darren and Rebbeca as they fled and instead towards this new foe. Uzi chuckled as it started to charge.
Meanwhile back at camp, N was recounting everyone, not only that but strangest of all was that now the MTF were gone as well.
“You're really bad at this….” V said.
“N-Now hold on! I…. Uhhh…. I can fix this!” N said, now panicking a bit.
Red rolled her eyes and said. “This is why I never should’ve come….”
Suddenly Darren and Rebbeca came running from over a nearby hill and through the trees, they were seemingly running from something.
“Hey guys? What’s wrong? Run into a 939?” Red said confused as she went up first to meet the exhausted pair.
“I-It’s Uzi! She’s gone feral!” Rebbeca said out of breath.
“Oh Uzi would never go feral! That’s crazy talk from a crazy girl!” Fennec said as she patted Rebbeca on the head.
“I-It’s true! She tried to eat us!” Darren replied.
“No slow done, I’m sure Uzi was just trying to scare you-“ N started before being cut off by a head of a 939 suddenly dropping from the sky right next to them as its blood sprayed everywhere.
Suddenly Uzi came flying down with blood on her lips as she crashed on the head, spilling its brains and gore everywhere.
“We’ll…. That’s new-“ Red said before suddenly being flung away by Uzi’s power’s.
N was also about to say something when he was suddenly flung away by Uzi.
Fennec was about to say something but as she saw Uzi her eyes widened into Ovals, and starting to shake and hyperventilate again as she fell onto her knees and then got magically tossed aside like the others.
V however was faster and charged directly. At Uzi, however, just as she was about to stab her. Uzi’s tail grabbed V and flung her deeper into the woods, Uzi flew after her. Uzi cut off V’s right arm and then used her powers to push her into a tree. V tried to shoot Uzi but Uzi just forced her hand up and the missile V shot missed horribly. Uzi then threw V to the ground and was about to stab her with her own syringe tail. When suddenly N came and grabbed Uzi by her coat along with Red who put her sword to Uzi’s neck, Fennec was also there helping V up.
“Woah, easy there.” N said, trying to calm down Uzi. However she just used her powers to hit Red with a nearby tree and stabbed N’s hand with V’s syringe.
“Ow, ok up we go!” N said as he tossed Uzi into the air above the very clouds.
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!” Red yelled as she got back up.
“No idea, but we’re trying to fix it.” V said as she regenerated herself.
Fennec said nothing as she lay on the ground curling her arms into her knees still shaking, repeating to herself no over and over again. Almost like she had seen this before.
“Ya…. I’ll go talk to her. Be right back!” N said as he flew up as well.
“…. Where’s those MTF when you need them?” Red said, sitting down next to V.
“I know, it’s infuriating sometimes.” V said, agreeing with Red.
Meanwhile the MTF team watched from a watchtower as Jane pressed a button on her radio and spoke into it.
“It’s happening, send everybody in, heavy and medium vehicles recommend and out down reality anchors. We got her.” Jane said as they started to go down from their watchtower.
From just outside the woods a large force of MTF operatives, tanks, APC’s, helicopters, and even some jets overhead started to move into the woods with utmost haste.
After some time with Red and V successfully making a snowman, N and Uzi suddenly crashed back down and crushed the snowman.
“God Dammit!” Red said, annoyed.
“Oh come on! That took us a few seconds to set up!” V said also annoyed.
“MY SNOWMANNN NOOOOO!” Fennec said as she started to cry a bit.
N was now holding Uzi who had lost her wings and tail.
“Accent was a bad idea anyway….” Uzi said as N was still holding her.
“N…. I’m also sorry….” Uzi said to N.
“Ehhh, not like you killed anyone! Except that 939…. But does that really count as anyone?” N said, looking at Red.
“Maybe, I don’t know I’m not a foundation researcher, why are you looking at me?!?” Red said.
“Hey, is it safe to come out now?” Rebbeca said as she came out from behind a tree. A lot of other WD’s did the same, some were hiding in the snow while others were literally in the trees.
“Wow, that was…. AWESOME! I’d like to see that again with my besties.” Lizzy said as she came out.
“Hey guys! I have returned with a bunch of snacks! As it turns out I left them in the trucks!…. What did I miss?” Thad said as he came out of the woods holding a load of chips and drinks.
Suddenly lights flashed on Uzi, N, V and Fennec as helicopters circled above. MTF ran out of APC’s as they charged into the area, with their guns all pointed to Uzi, their flashlights nearly blinding. Some of them even set up strange machines that glowed red and pulsated with red light.
Jane and the other MTF also came out from the crowd of MTF now gathering around and focusing on Uzi.
“Uzi, N, V, Red, and F. by order of the 05 council. You are all being detained for having abilities that can and will harm the people and things around you. Surrender yourselves or we will be forced to fire!” Jane said.
Uzi, N, V, Red, and Fennec looked around at the force of MTF and vehicles around them, the sound of helicopters above them and jet fighters circling like vultures above them.
“BITE ME!!!” Uzi yelled as she stared at Jane in anger and betrayal.