Myrmidon
______________________________________________
Fucking reactive-network security systems. Why can’t we break into a place with a normal fucking network for a change? I’m a fucking university level media distribution student not a crack team of neural-cyber hackers. I can’t get this door open, even if I had a month.
Fuck.
“Huy’n I can’t get it open, it’s a fucking RN system.”
“Then what the fuck good are you!? God damn I.R.I.S. is on its way and you can’t even open a fuckin’ door!”
What a gorilla. I bet this guy was an exercise freak twenty years ago. Jacked up on honey and fixing things by slapping them. No wonder he hates I.R.I.S. enough to crawl a life of crime, they are probably the ones that made him permanently immune to his favorite steroid.
“We’ll just have to blow up the lock.”
“Are you fuckin’ core-burnt? This room is like three meters long, the only explosives we have will kill us long ‘fore that door is even scratched.”
“Just shut the fuck up and let me concentrate. Give me one of your SP rounds.”
Figures. The only three-syllable word he has used in four hours is the one about blowing shit up. Did the dumb fucker think I meant his fiber-putty? What we need here is fucking finesse. I take the ejected SP cartridge and place it on the ground. Getting out my computer repair tools, I am forced to marvel at how manual I have become lately. And to think I used to mock the technicians that had to actually touch the inside of computers rather than the keyfields.
Well, at least getting all hands on is a good mental exercise in lateral thinking. Who knew an anti-static tech repair micro-knife was the perfect tool for taking apart military grade bullets without them exploding? After getting the bullet apart I take the self-propellant section and toss it in my bag. Maybe I’ll use it to scare the shit out of that bitch in Class 3-R. Holding the rest of the round by the cone, I take an electron swab and wipe up all the gunpowder and nanites from the middle. I gently insert them into the lock through the seam around the touchpad and...
“Fraz it! I just heard gunfire. Hurry the fuck up!”
Deep breath... Breathe...
“I’m about two ticks from going overclocked on you, you worthless sack of shit! I told you to let me fucking concentrate! I almost set this thing off before it was time! Fuck! Fuck... okay... Now get over here and let this fucker scan your finger.”
“You really ARE core-burnt! I’m not leavin’ my DNA in the door of a gov’ building that is being swarmed by I.R.I.S. as we speak! You touch it.”
“It already has my DNA in the system from my first attempts to get it open. I’m locked out. I just need you to touch it. It will scan you, deny you access, and when it does the signal it sends to the door will set off the gunpowder.”
“Yer the most useless motherfuckin’ tech-monkey I’ve ever seen. Get the fuck out of my way.”
Tech-monkey. Ha. That slang went off mode before I was even born. Tech-monkey indeed. I am a motherfucking sys-spider, thank you very much. I take a quick step back as his fat fingers gingerly tap the scanner.
The moment he does the entire screen bursts outwards with a loud crackle, sending hundreds of thousands of microscopic shards of plasma coated glass into his fingers and palm. So maybe that thing about the DNA wasn’t strictly accurate. Hey, like Hell I’m touching any of these scanners with my bare skin. He’s probably a wanted felon already anyways, and I’m not. No need to leave my DNA behind. And I need my fingers dexterous and healthy more than he does. I’m sure if he was aware of the logic here he’d agree.
Huy’n seems content to stand there clutching his hand and gasping in pain, so I push past him, shove my hand in the newly opened gap, and heave the door aside. We’ve got places to be, people to meet. No time for acting like a fetus. I pull out my pistol, shoulder my bag, and start running down the hall.
______________________________________________
Objective: Retrieve Stolen StemCorp Data
Sub Objective: Neutralize Perpetrators
I.R.I.S. is not usually so quick to authorize lethal force against unknown entities. That data must be important. Or illegal, but either way it’s more valuable than human life. Which, upon reflection, is a rather inconsistent unit of currency. The exchange rate between a human life and Standard International Credits varies depending on person. Or even the same person in different types of transactions. An individual’s “worth” in SIC’s in regards to sex slavery or assassination, for example, is not only divergent but also varies by broker, expiration date, and a dozen other factors.
I digress. The data is worth more than the collective values of the thieves plus the bullets and man-hours used to kill them. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. It need not automatically come down to death, or even violence. I suppose assuming such is a poor choice of mentality for what is ostensibly a professional peace-keeper. It comes down to pedantic musings though, as my personal opinions are at this point a rather abstract concept.
The helicopter is coming in for the approach. I notice the building has a section marked out in yellow lines for aerial landings. Cute. This helicopter, combined with the rappel equipment, could drop us virtually any spot on any rooftop in the entire city. As expected, the pilots are completely ignoring the marked landing zone, and swinging in near the front corner. Quiet as a bat. Remarkable what a few pieces of sound-dampening emitter technology can do to a combat vehicle. Sure, you can’t hear anything else either, but that’s a moot point with the enclosed helmets and wireless communication setups we all have. It’s not like I.R.I.S. cares about whatever criminals and terrorists might have to say while being shot at anyways.
Squad Alpha is standing up now. Any second the doors will open and they will jump out. I don’t think the pilots intend to land yet, so it will be a bit of a drop. Carrying as much weight as we are, a fall like that would assuredly break at least a couple bones. The H.A.V.E.C. armour will handle it though. It handles quite a lot.
The doors are opening now. I imagine it would be pretty loud right under the propellers, were I able to even remotely hear them. And the wind would whip my face and hair, were either of them not encased in metal. Rather, the only sounds are the rhythmic, mechanically spoken deployment confirmations from each unit as they exit the chopper. The only sensations the weight of the gun in my lap and the subtle swaying of the hovering copter. Like watching a very old film.
Squad Beta is going through the windows halfway down the building it seems. As the copter swings around the side of the skyscraper, my vision of the glass walls is overlaid with orange blueprints of each room. My window has a red marker, my predicted path a neat red line. It seems I am being directed down the stairwell. Wonderful. I loathe going down stairs in H.A.V.E.C. armour. Deviating from my route would instantly inform my entire squad though, not to mention Mission Control.
Last review before we roll out. My orange and red visual overlay is suddenly in action, as six pure green figures go through the projected entrance. I’m watching my future self live the next three minutes of my present self’s life. Such a neat, smooth, color-coded simulation. According to this, I can open the door to the stairwell but have to kick open the door exiting it.
Little green 3D model me kicks open that door so effortlessly. But non-virtual me’s legs are going to feel very unpleasant and sluggish after walking down three levels of stairs. I’m going to bash it open with the butt of my gun instead. Mission Control won’t know.
I clutch the rappel wire in my left hand, putting my right foot onto the bar. Here goes... The helicopter tilts away from the building as Squad Beta leaps from the side farther from it. We are not all going in on the same floor, so a couple units make the leap a few moments before I do. I feel the weightlessness of falling, so liberating after the heavy burden of the H.A.V.E.C. It is snatched away from me though, as the rappel wire reaches its calculated length and the copter tilts back the other way.
I smash through the safety glass of this skyscraper like it isn’t even there. For the briefest of instants I could see my own reflection, a black boxy outline amidst the sparkling splendor of the nighttime city skyline. Before it all shatters into several thousand silent shards. I keep my momentum as my boots impact the ground, stomping my way forwards. I crush through a desk, my shoulder colliding with the side of a monitor and a couple barrels of my minigun clipping another; spinning it to the ground. The plastifoam desk is demolished as my careening bulk wrecks electronics and decorations alike.
Damn. That stuff was probably expensive. What do the Public Relations staff expect us to do? I’m not trying to cause collateral damage but H.A.V.E.C. armour and gracefulness just do not link. If you go around slinging combat suits through office-building windows you’re going to break a couple computers. What else do they want me to say? Whoever’s desk this was will hopefully send their complaint to their boss, rather than my boss.
Focus. My route. The tech-team turned off all the lights in the building, so my visor’s Darkvision kicks in. The walls, ceiling, doors, and most of the wiring are a dull orange, my uploaded blueprints to thank. Everything else around me is various shades of gray. I can partially see through the walls, floor, and doors. It’s mildly disorienting at first. My squadmates are green, their suits and mine communicating our exact locations. I can see them clearly, even through the orange. Ammunition counts, heart rates, ID’s, and other relevant information helpfully floating beside them in little green words with little green numbers. Always facing towards me no matter what angle or direction they are.
They are all in motion, I need to keep pace. I roll my shoulders, switch on the gun’s aiming assist program, and start clomping along the red line on the floor.
______________________________________________
“Either these floorplans are outdated or we’re fucking lost.”
You would think that since we are both tech students, Era’ad and I would get along. You’d think. Right now I want to strangle the fucker.
“Look, how can we be lost in a fucking square office building? We just need to keep going down. Down is good, around and around in circles, bad.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a fucking idiot! I know we need to go down, but how the fuck are we going to do that? The elevators are shut off, the stairs are probably full of I.R.I.S. motherfuckers, and we keep running into locked doors we can’t break open. What do you suggest we fucking do, crawl through the ventilation system?”
“Don’t be stupid, they are obviously going to have fucking fiber-wire strung up like spiderwebs in that shit. Look, alright, what about the windows? Maybe we could get to a different building?”
“No fuckin’ way, the moment we get near a window, they’ll fuckin’ snipe us.”
Huy’n, you are a lot bigger, and are holding a much bigger gun. The snipers will shoot you first. I’ll be fine.
“Yeah, whatever. This whole job has turned into a giant clusterfuck. Who the fuck knew I.R.I.S. would send the H.A.V.E.C. units for what was supposed to be a silent theft? Something must have gone wrong, tipped StemCorp off that data was missing before we got the fuck out of here. It wasn’t supposed to go like this!”
If Era’ad keeps crashing like this I’m going to knock the fucker out and leave him for I.R.I.S. Fuck. I should never have agreed to go on this job.
“Yeah, well, we can figure that shit out when we are not all about to be fucking shot! Look, what about the freight elevator? I doubt I.R.I.S. would send people up in that. And I know the fuckers have the ground floor surrounded, but the freight goes all the way to the deepest basement.”
“Yeah, fucking genius, except NONE OF THE ELEVATORS ARE WORKING!!”
That was finally enough to make Riunes stop fiddling with his Slab and look up.
“Will you shut the fuck up! You core-burnt retards do you want us to get caught?”
He held up his Slab for us to look at. On the screen was a diagram of the freight elevator shafts, along with a bunch of descriptions and what looked like repair instructions.
“This is an email from last year that StemCorp sent to an elevator contractor group. Look, the shaft has a ladder built into the side. We can climb down.”
“We’re at least forty-five fucking stories up. These twig-armed fucks can’t climb down that far fast enough.”
“Shut the fuck up you ape. We can climb down a fucking ladder!”
“Stop bickering. The freight is this way.”
Damn. It’s a good thing we ran into Era’ad and Riunes, before either Huy’n or I actually shot the other. They are both part of the team that made it to the server vault first. Somehow they got separated from the other half of their team, but happened to run into us on the stairwell. Riunes is a real hardcore rebel. Era’ad’s just in because he wants to fuck with the Admins and thinks he can seduce a few rebellious slots while he’s at it. But Riunes actually believes in a cause. If it wasn’t totally illogical I might even find the fucker a little inspiring.
As we make our way to the freight, I tap Riunes on the shoulder.
“You have some of the data we came here for right? Give me a copy of it, that way we have backups in case we lose it, or something happens to one of us.”
“I can’t. The fucker’s got one of the deepest forms of encryption I've ever seen. Among other things it’s preventing the data from being copied or transferred. It literally took all four of my team working together just to brute force the fucker in half. I’ve got some of the data on this memory cube, Lart’an had the other cube.”
“Fuck. Look, I'm not even completely sure I know what the fuck that data is even about.”
“I do. But it’s complicated and right now we need to focus. I’ll explain it when we get the fuck out of here.”
It’s dark as shit in here, so we almost walked right past the sign pointing towards the freight area. In an effort to avoid being noticed, we only have two small lights on between the four of us, mostly kept pointed at the ground.
Like everyfucking other door, the ones to the service area of this floor are closed and locked. We’ve been using a bunch of cleaning supplies and a metal pole we found in a janitorial bot hanger to force the doors open. If all four of us heave at the same time, we can usually crack the doors open enough to squeeze through sideways.
On the one hand it’s a huge pain in the ass that we have to open it wider than the other three of us need so gorilla-bodied Huy’n can fit. On the other hand he’s the only reason we can pry open the doors at all.
Two more doors and a wrong left turn latter, we find the freight elevator. It’s large, over three meters across and smooth shiny metal with a couple little windows. From the way it looks, both halves slide sideways into the wall.
Fortunately for us, it has a smaller, human sized door to the side of one panel. Getting it open takes us longer than we would like. We are all jittery and stressed. Even Riunes is sweating with nerves. I can’t fault him. I.R.I.S. is no fucking joke.
I don’t know what we would have done if the elevator itself had happened to be waiting on this floor. We would be fucked. It probably would have a roof hatch but it sure as shit is not going to move and we can’t fit between it and the walls. What would we do, fucking chew through the steel floor?
Don’t fucking matter, when we finally get the door open there is nothing there but blackness and a tiny rung ladder, embedded into a vertical groove in the wall. We shine our little flashlights down the shaft, but there is nothing. It’s like a fucking bottomless pit. I turn to Huy’n, and gesture downwards.
“After you.”
______________________________________________
“A4: Suspects Located.”
“A4: Suspects Engaged.”
“A4: Suspects Neutralized.”
“A1: Request - Activate Door 62D3.”
“B5: Suspect Located.”
“B5: Suspect Engaged.”
“S1: A1 Request Confirmed.”
“A2: Suspect Located.”
“B5: Suspect Neutralized.”
“S1: A1 Request Granted.”
“A2: Suspect Engaged”
“A2: Suspect Neutralized.”
“A3: Suspect Located.”
“A3: Suspect Engaged.”
“A3: Suspect Neutralized.”
“B6: Suspect Located.”
“B6: Suspect Engaged.”
“A1: Suspects Located.”
“B6: Suspect in Retreat. Initiating Pursuit.”
“A1: Suspects Engaged.”
“A1: Suspects Neutralized.”
“B6: Suspect Entering Stairwell at 42S2. Request - Intercept.”
“S1: B6 Request Confirmed.”
“S1: B6 Request Granted. B3 Route Updated. Move to Intercept.”
“B3: Confirmed.”
“A6: Suspects Located.”
“A6: Suspects Subdued. One male, one female. Request - Backup.”
“S1: A6 Request Confirmed.”
“S1: A6 Request Granted. A5 Route Updated.”
“A5: Confirmed.”
“A6: Activating External Vocals. Audio Clip: Arrest Variant 3A”
“You are under arrest. Face the wall. Get on your knees and put your forehead on the ground. Spread both arms out straight to the side, palms on the floor. Do not speak. Do not move. Lethal force has been authorized. Do – Not – Resist.”
“B5: Amend Previous B5 Statement. Suspect Subdued. Conducting Medical Analyses. Request - Med Unit.”
“S1: B5 Request Confirmed.”
“A4: Suspect Located.”
“A4: Suspect Engaged.”
“A4: Suspect Neutralized.”
“B3: Intercept Successful. Suspect Engaged.”
“S1: B5 Request Granted. Med Unit E.T.A. 4 Minutes.”
“B3: Suspect Neutralized.”
“A5: A6 Backup Accomplished.”
“A2: Ambient Autoscan Successfully Located StemCorp Data within Memory Cube on Body of Suspect. Conducting Technical Analysis.”
“A4: Suspect Located.”
“A4: Suspect Engaged.”
“A2: Memory Cube Encrypted. Request - Technical Assistance.”
“S1: A2 Request Confirmed.”
“B5: Suspect Condition Deteriorating Rapidly.”
“M1: On Route to B5. Current E.T.A. 2.5 Minutes.”
“A4: Suspect Subdued. Conducting Medical Analysis.”
“S1: A2 Request Granted. Establishing DataLink with StemCorp Representative.”
“A4: Medical Analysis Complete. Multiple gunshot wounds to lower extremities. Estimated Percent Chance of Survival: 86. Request - Med Unit.”
“B5: Suspect Deceased. Cancel Request - Med Unit.”
“S1: B5 Request Canceled. A4 Request Confirmed. Granted. Rerouting Med Unit.”
“M1: Confirmed. E.T.A. 2 Minutes.”
“S2: All Units. StemCorp Representative Reports Retrieved Memory Cube Contains 47% of Known Stolen StemCorp Data. Retrieval Units Deployed to All Known Neutralized Suspects.
Squad Alpha: Enable Ultrasound Enhanced Darkvison and Initiate Thorough Sweep of Floors 45+. Squad Beta: Cease all Current Activity and begin Immediate Rapid Decent to Floor 20 via Activated Elevators. A4 and A6: Hold Positions until Detainment Units Arrive, then Proceed.
Squad Gamma finishing Perimeter Deployment. E.T.A. to Ground Floor Assault: 4 Minutes. All Unit Routes Updated. All Units: Confirm.”
“A1: Confirmed.”
“A2: Confirmed.”
“A3: Confirmed.”
“A4: Confirmed.”
“A5: Confirmed.”
“A6: Confirmed.”
“B1: Confirmed.”
“B2: Confirmed.”
“B3: Confirmed.”
“B4: Confirmed.”
“B5: Confirmed.”
“B6: Confirmed.”
______________________________________________
Fucking Hell, my shoulders are screaming so loudly... My knees are shaking and my palms won’t stop cramping. This is fucking ridiculous. Why is climbing down a ladder this strenuous? I can’t believe it. How much fucking longer until we reach the bottom?
I look down, but Huy’n’s wide shoulders prevent me from observing directly below, and anything to the sides is too shadowed and blank to be informative. Fuck.
Wait, no, Huy’n’s footsteps just sounded different. Yeah, he’s reached the bottom. Fucking finally. When he grunts and steps off a bit, I stretch a leg out to get purchase and almost tumble over when my foot cocks on some piece of metal. Oh. Right. This isn’t the clear, flat floor; it’s the top of the elevator compartment.
Huy’n had tossed that metal bar and some plastic jugs of slippery whatever into the shaft before we started to climb. They had broken open after the long fall but there was enough dregs to start prying open the emergency hatch while Era’ad and Riunes finished getting down and tried to catch their wheezing breaths.
Once we got better light on the fucker we realized it didn’t need to be pried up, it just had a latch. We turned and heaved the fucker open. Huy’n went in first, weirdly agile for such a graffitied brute. I tossed in the pole and was about to chuck in the jugs when I heard his hushed voice.
“Wait, the door is open. Just get the fuck in here.”
I hopped down eagerly. Too eagerly. Like a fucking gooner jumping into a private room with their first cam-girl. Turns out the freight elevator compartment was a lot taller than a regular passenger elevator. I landed hard and my ankles felt like they fucking snapped on the metal surface. My knees hit the floor and I half lurched, half crashed forward onto my hands. I glared at Huy’n, who was ignoring my suffering and nervously peeking into the darkness as best he could without a light.
“Nice catch, motherfucker...”
Riunes was next, learning from my mistake and swinging his legs in first while bent forward at the belly, then dropping a bit more gracefully. He too walked a step towards the already open doors as I got ready to help Era’ad land if needed.
Riunes was next, learning from my mistake and swinging his legs in first while bent forward at the belly, then dropping a bit more gracefully. He too walked a step towards the already open doors as I got ready to help Era’ad land if needed.
I saw the sparks and heard the pings before I heard the sound of the gunshots itself milliseconds after. Fuck! I'm getting fucking shot at! I felt more than saw a bullet smash through the Slab inside my pack while Era’ad gasped and starting choking. I scrambled away from the hatch as Era’ad tumbled in and crashed on his front. Huy’n put his arm in and grabbed his shirt, yanking him out. We all wildly fled the compartment as bullets whizzed around, most puncturing right through the top of the elevator and embedding in the floor or else ricocheting into the void.
Fucking fuck... Bullets! Help me...
Once I was clear and the seemingly endless pelting of gunfire finally stopped I kept rubbing my palms all over my clothes; amazed and swamped with relief that I wasn't hit. We got up off the floor and looked around. We'd stumbled into a room that was far larger than I thought it would be. Our tiny lights did nothing to illuminate it fully, with steel girders high above and a white concrete feeling floor spreading out all around us. My light passed over one of StemCorp’s self driving freight trucks, it’s fucking logo on the side and everything. A fucking 18-wheeler. How the fuck did they get an 18-wheeler into the fucking basement?
There were three of them actually. Two parked against the walls and a third in this sort of really big circle. It was a different color than the rest of the floor with a thick yellow line on the edge, the truck just barely fitting inside it. What the fuck?
There were crates and shrinkwrapped pallets scattered about, some forklifts and other warehouse type shit here and there as well. These were all self-driven though. Useless to us, even if we knew how to override their AI and manually pilot them they have fingerprint scanners on the doors and steering wheels.
The walls had all sorts of pipes and bundles of wires. The largest were those off white plastic-y ones larger than tree trunks. Others were thin brightly colored things with warning labels and those little steering wheel valves. Some had writing on them. I never knew there was all this shit underneath a fucking office building.
It was sort of like the structure was a huge computer. The pipes were like the paths on a microchip, or the fiber-wire connecting the circuit boards to each other and shit. This then would be one of the ports in the back or side. If I wasn’t currently fleeing murderous law-enforcement drones this might actually be really interesting to examine.
Oh fuck. Era’ad. I’m such a troll, I didn’t even check him. I spun, my mind all pixelated with guilt. Huy’n was wrapping up his arm with some nanite gauze while Riunes was giving him something to drink from one of the bottles we took a second to smash out of a vending machine earlier. His eyes were pretty unfocused, like he hit his head or something. But his arm seemed alright. I mean, he was fucking bleeding yeah but that didn’t look 'imminently' fatal.
When Era’ad was as tended to as he was going to get for a while Riunes pointed out a particular pipe with his light. It was the only large blue one we had seen, angled diagonally along the wall from the top of one corner to the bottom of another. It had water-like symbols on it, and lots of white numbers. I went over to the low end and kicked it. It was metal and sounded kind of hollow. I lay my hand on it.
“Riunes, this is a little colder than room temperature.”
It, along with some other smaller pipes, hooked around a corner and continued down what seemed like a modest sized hallway. Shepherding the drunk Era’ad towards the hallway, I noticed some unlabeled doors across from the pipes on the wall, and one of those big garbage cans on wheels people still sometimes use for shit that is too big for the cleaning bots to deal with efficiently.
I looked behind us to discover Huy’n was fiddling with his gun. Looking back towards the elevator and pacing side to side. He gave a shout and fired the gun in a deafening burst when a deep revving sound started! A quick grinding sound likewise scraped for a second then faded. He kept fucking shooting at nothing like one of the fucking jihadists on the news forcing Riunes and I to hit the ground again and cover for fear of yet more ricochets.
“What the fucking fuck was that?” he shouted as he pawed at the magazine of his gun. Riunes and I gingerly moved our hands away from our ears and uncrouched after we realized Huy’n’s reckless, pointless fucking display had jammed his gun.
Riunes cut short whatever he was about to electrocute Huy’n with as his face went even paler than it already had been all night. Era’ad’s arm was over his shoulders, head dangling in a worrisome manner.
“It was probably the elevator going back up, to get the fucker that shot at us. Come on, let’s follow this pipe.”
We followed the pipe until it went into the wall after a dozen meters. Fucking dead end, just some shelves and boxes loaded with more janitorial shit.
“Look, this is a big building near the middle of the city. It’s probably got literally a thousand toilets, sinks, and water dispensers, two or three kitchens, and who knows how much rainwater gathering on the roof that isn’t allowed to just gush onto the sidewalk. It’s got to be connected to the city’s storm drain system. This is got to be that pipe. I.R.I.S. can’t possibly have thugs in every culvert and water junction. We don’t need to get far away, only a block or two from here past the police barricade. Then up to the street or another building, and into the crowd. Get Era’ad's bag, it has some fiber-putty.”
“I can’t fucking fit in that, it’s like half a fucking meter wide! Fucking fucking fuck you guys! There’s gotta be ‘nother way. A tunnel to a different building. Some stairs or shit!”
He turned and ran off, clutching that big gun to his chest like a rainbow unicorn businessman holding a Slab bag in the rain with no umbrella. Fuck him. Riunes helped Era’ad stand on his own and lean against the pipe a relatively safe distance back up the hallway.
My fingers were twitching and I couldn’t stop swallowing. Fuck. I’m going to fucking swallow my own tongue and die unless I get moderator on this shit. Trying to breathe, I walked through the basics of the mushy fiber-putty I had unwrapped from the foil. We practiced this shit before jobs. I could do this. I was manual these days, remember?
Why can’t I stop snickering? Fuck!
We turned away and covered our ears as I depressed the lever and the wire studded wad blew up like a gunpowder filled old-school light bulb. Riunes was already at the hole by the time I forced my fingers to uncurl and open my fucking eyes. Fuck. Fucking move! I shoved the trigger and wires into my pack before rushing over, trying to see around Riunes' shoulder into the pipe.
“Well? Can we fucking get out of here?”
______________________________________________
I’ve never seen A4 kill so many people in a single mission. A strange juxtaposition. Her behavior in the field consistently marks her as the most, relatively, peaceful and non-confrontational members of all three squads. Especially compared to the overall aggressive and blunt Squad Alpha. Yet she spends unusually vast amounts of her off-duty time in full H.A.V.E.C. loadout practicing at the training facilities, and is praised for having the highest Engagement - Neutralized ratio since I.R.I.S. was founded. But also the most live captures, with yet more tally marks for both on this mission.
Recruitment for H.A.V.E.C. units dismisses outright any applicant without years of combat experience as well as exemplary mental and academic records, yet A4 stands out as elite even among valedictorians and veterans. Every member of Squad Beta and likely the others desire her regardless of their genders, myself included. I’ve been twin-linked with my partner for years and have two children but I already know if the opportunity arose I still wouldn’t hesitate to sleep with her.
Which sounds reasonable outside of context but becomes rather absurd when examined. I’ve never seen her face, never heard her voice, do not know her name, and didn’t even know her sex until more than six months after we “met”. I.R.I.S. protocol strictly forbids any fraternization between H.A.V.E.C. wearers, on the grounds it would cloud our minds and distract us from the task at hand. Only the absolute bare minimum of information required to operate as a team is shared such as which weapons we are proficient with, which blood type to use in first aid, or if we have prior experience in a certain location relevant to the mission. H.A.V.E.C. armour even converts our voices into one of a couple dozen distinct but artificial voices, so no matter how physically impaired or hypothetically emotional we might become when speaking we always sound calm and easy to understand on the other end.
Over time little bits and pieces slip through, as none of us are particularly zealous about that doctrine and only obey it since we are constantly being watched. I know for example that B5 was not born in this nation, and B3’s favorite color is yellow. Mutual fascination with A4 did lead us to delve a little deeper into that mystery though.
All H.A.V.E.C. suits are custom made for a specific wearer. They look identical on the outside, yet those for women conform internally to be snug but not unduly compress her chest. They are also noticably different inside the groin area, since all H.A.V.E.C. units are designed to be worn for days without becoming too soiled or unhygienic. It was a straightforward matter to have a proxy bribe one of the engineers assigned to A4’s armour’s upkeep into divulging her gender, height, and build measurements.
As to her appearance, a smuggling operation in this one mission turned out to be more prepared than we had been informed. Before we arrived they rigged an explosion trap that killed two members of Squad Alpha and seriously wounded A4. I was one of the two units that dragged her unconscious body away from the front-line. I noticed as I was returning to the scene that there was fresh blood on the arm of my armour. Seizing the opportunity I took a moment to repetitively flex and bend my arm in an attempt to work the blood deep into the creases.
The suits were thoroughly cleaned later of course, but we managed to get a hazmat technician also curious about A4 to sneak out a tiny swab of thinned blood from deep in a recess. The chemicals had damaged the sample but we sent it to a public DNA testing group and got back garbled results sufficient enough to determine A4 was of mostly European genetic ancestry, had brown hair with blue eyes, and was probably born allergic to strawberries.
In summation a paltry basis for sexual attraction. Ridiculous even. I’ve never conversed or interacted with her outside of work, and even then only very fleetingly as we are on separate squads. And yet it is there. I often wonder why A4 joined I.R.I.S.’s H.A.V.E.C. squads. She probably could have been successful at other things, careers both less dangerous and with much more personal freedom.
This is what happens when a slow moving elevator brings you down from the clouds to below the earth. You are forced to stand there doing nothing, and your mind wanders away to pointless, probably illegal, thoughts. So impatient was I to escape I stood in the center of the opening doors and pushed through them with shoulders turned rather than crouch off to the side, gun at the ready, to survey the scene first. I had before enjoyed how uneventful my route was while my fellows requested, killed, and arrested. But then I noticed the mostly empty jug of glass cleaner strangely discarded along my route near a door that wasn’t closed all the way like the rest. A few requests and confirmations later I was standing in front of a cliff to nothingness, looking at some distant thermal shapes magnified by my helmet. Now I just wanted to shut this mission down hard and go home.
It is black as the void here, but as I stepped out into the cavernous basement my armour informed me of trace heat signatures in the area in front of me, probably the results of fear fueled heavy breathing and nervous sweat droplets on the floor only moments ago. Or perhaps the warmth of spilled blood if my opening salvo earlier accomplished anything. Then my Darkvision put highlight boxes around what looked to be shell casings on the floor. A thunderous boom suddenly reverberated resoundingly throughout the sub-level. I heard the sound and it’s crashing echo but felt no shockwave in the air or vibrations caress the bottoms of my feet. A small explosion then, made to seem larger by the acoustics. Probably set off to destroy some grate or locked door preventing the thieves from scurrying off.
It didn’t matter. They were not going to escape.
“B2: Suspects Located.”
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For some reason I felt surprised that the overhead sprinkler system still worked with the power cut even in an area with nothing in particular to burn. I instinctively rushed to shelter my Slab under my shirt before remembering it had been shot and didn’t work anyways. Just as well let it get soaked, less likely to give recoverable data if for some reason it gets left behind.
Damn I’m all proxied up. It’s going to get soaked regardless crawling through this fucking drainage pipe. I slapped myself a bit. Pushed my fingers through my hair. Focus. Fucking focus. Riunes shown his light in downstream, but we didn’t see any bars or wires.
“Look, if they had a mesh or whatever set up, it would be either here or at the very end. They won’t put it in the middle since how would they get to it to unclog the thing if something happened?”
Era’ad was shaking hard now. He hasn’t lost that much blood, so he was probably just going into shock. I couldn’t tell if his arm had stopped working, or if he was just holding it up with the other one to lessen the pain. Fuck. I wasn’t fond of the guy, but I mean I didn’t want him to get shot either. Even if we escaped his blood was on the floor and shit. His life was fucked. We couldn’t leave him though. I turned to Riunes.
“Alright, he’s crashed. I’ll go first, you go last. We can drag and push him if he passes out or lags up.”
A weird crackling sound, like an angry gamer pounding on an old clackety keyboard burst from behind us. Then a different, smoother but equally as loud sound mixed in for a moment before it was just echoes.
“Go! I think I heard Huy’n scream a little at the end of that. We need to hurry!”
I clambered into the pipe, wary of the jagged edges from our fiber-putty bomb. We had tried making it as small as possible to avoid damaging the pipe so much we couldn’t use it, so I had to wiggle in. There were half a dozen cursor shaped points though. I felt them scratch my skin as I squeezed in, trying to tell myself I wasn’t bleeding and the pipe would wash any traces of me anyways.
Once in I scooted back using my arms to propel me, my boots slipping around on the curved walls. Boots. What a nature humper thing to wear. I’d never owned any before I got involved in all this shit. The water only filled the pipe about 10%. At this time of night, there wasn’t a lot of toilets and drinking fountains and shit running. We should be alright. There will be air deeper in.
There was a sound. Like a soaking wet shirt being ripped apart right next to my ear! My teeth felt fuzzy and I crashed to the bottom of the pipe. Pain! The pain screamed so loud but my lungs couldn’t scream too. I was going numb everywhere except where it hurt. It hurt so bad! I was gasping but it wasn’t helping. The water was in my mouth, I couldn’t see clearly. What happened? What was that noise? Footsteps? Riunes? Help me!?
This can’t be happe... I didn’t want it to be like this. The money... they said the data was worth 1,00... I thought, maybe if I... R-3... then they... bitch... error... no...
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“B2: Suspects Neutralized.”
The one in the jacket was still alive. I didn’t bother with using Subdued however, he had no chance at all of survival. At least three bullets had punctured his stomach and other abdominal organs. More had pierced through his legs and he was bleeding uncontrollably. He was retching blood and bile, his legs were convulsing. I didn’t end him. Mission Control would chastise me for wasting bullets.
He crawled towards me. There were blood bubbles forming and popping in his mouth. He was crying and a murky mixture was flowing from his nose. His hand feebly gripped the front of my boot, red fingers finding no real purchase on the smooth lobstered plates. I thought about A4’s blood on my wrist and elbow.
His lips were moving. I couldn’t tell if he was truly speaking though, no noise permeated the helmet. Perhaps it was some abstract memory of outdated protocol regarding a person’s final words. Perhaps I felt an urge to somehow know more, know anything really, about him the way I always wondered about A4. I linked the external microphones to my helmet speakers.
“...ments, neur... neural repair they cal... it... illegal... the data, test subject recor... changewing a perwons mind... can’t rewist it... I wust... I wust want to knwow what happened to Connie... onnie... what...”
He stopped shivering. That recording may or may not be promptly deleted. My ambient scanners picked up the memory cube in his satchel. It was automatically reported. Whatever was on it surely was the other half of the stolen data. There was nothing I could do. Every H.A.V.E.C. armour has a support team monitoring it. At least two or three people were seeing live everything I saw. Hearing everything I heard, reading all the information gathered and output by the suit. It was all recorded. Any one of a dozen people could, and likely would, report the slightest infraction. Mission Control would review everything, worse case scenario I’d be Mind Delved by those experimental law enforcement machines to poke around in my subconscious.
There were clauses in my contracts discussing corruption, witness protection, rights. It wouldn’t make any difference. If I stepped on that memory cube and ground it to particulates. If I nudged it into the water and it was washed down that drainage pipe. If I resigned immediately and rushed to the news media with my suspicions. It wouldn’t matter. I’d be imprisoned sooner or later. Probably sooner. If I did not quietly disappear after a few years, I'd spend the rest of my mortal days in a cell. And all that on the unproven, unverified assumption that the garbled sputterings of a dying criminal were both completely honest and accurate.
I don’t know what he was talking about. I don’t know anything but what the general public does about StemCorp. I know even less about this man. And less than that about Connie.
I silently stood there in that underground rain. Swiftly vanishing vapor rose like elementally inverted flames from my gun as droplets struck the barrels. Rivulets slid off the many terminations of various pieces of my encasement. I too might have slid down on limp legs, but of course the H.A.V.E.C. armour wouldn’t let me.