The war of the prodigy

The war of the prodigy
Prologue


What choice does a man have? Is it wrong to be distraught at the terrible truth of your existence? Is it so wrong to run? Leave everything you knew behind? 3 years of active duty and I find myself having to do what no agent should ever do, run, but why? An agent with my skills, capable of immense feats of physical and mental prowess, reduced to running? Why should I, a decorated embodiment of modern enforcement, the result of the prodigy experiment, have to turn tail and run?

  Survival, simply put, the only hope I have is to live long enough to find a way to get some information out, with any luck my replacement will be sent to recover my shell, find what is left of me, and ensure that the technology inside me will never become available to anyone but the Global Agent Enforcement Corporation, GAEC, my leaders, home base, the area where an agent should be able to call back to for whatever he needs, soon to become the area for my funeral pyre, if I get even that.
The darkness of Papua New Guinea at night is already chilling my body, of all the PNG outer islands I could have chosen to seek refuge, why did I pick the one that had almost no cover and an underground access to walkers and other such large destruction causing things?

Call it human nature, the tugging feeling inside that begs you to find a way to give your enemy a chance, the will to take a risk for the better of your own ego, our self-destructive thinking that somehow we would be doing something good for ourselves by allowing the risk of failure into our minds, something to give us the rush of adrenaline that comes from coming out on top of a near impossible situation, however we never seem to notice that what we are doing is putting us in the situation that we must fight to get out of. Human nature is going to be what gets us killed.

There is an abandoned building in sight! A place of refuge for me to get this data out of my head and leave something for my replacement, something to help him understand why I am marked for termination, if he knows, maybe my death will not be in vain, so as I dive through the back window of the building, entering into a rolling stop I hit my head on a wooden table, Hollywood lies all the time, you never can be sure of what will happen, I begin to taste copper, mixing with the air in which death was hanging so strongly, no, not now, I block the pain out, I tell myself “it isn’t you that is hurting” I essentially create myself a doppelganger on which to place my pain until I can come to terms with it. Through the door I can see an opening which seems to lead to some stairs, the walkers and tanks outside will be hard pressed to destroy me if I can get to the basement level of the building, one great problem with using giant robots is getting into small buildings, so in I go, down the stairs, into the basement, just as the rain starts, further blighting this cursed night, hopefully my hiding spot will buy me enough time to get the data uploaded before the infantry are called out to sweep the building, so here goes.





*****UPLOADING*****

Subject: Henries-J
Preferred recipient: One GAEC Nanotech agent
Alternate recipient: Members of the free republic of Africa

Details: My last message, code: the message on my grave;
Body:

Well agent, seems like my bosses have found a replacement for me, this message will be available to you in it’s entirety once you have disconnected your infolink, if you do not, you will join me, once done follow these instructions…

*****MESSAGE CONTINUES ON CLOSED CHANNEL. DEACTIVATE INFOLINK. DATA ONLY AVAILABLE ON CLOSED CHANNEL*****

Body: *****SEE ABOVE*****

*****DATA UPLOADED*****

*****INCLUDE ATTATCHMENTS Q N/Y*****

Y

*****ATTATCHMENT TYPE*****

Video, recorded as VIDMV 0073, available open only on closed channel

*****DATASPHERE GENERATED, ALL INFORMATION SAFE, GOODBYE AGENT HENRIES*****

Odd, a nanomechanical artificial intelligence trying to simulate some form of emotion, and not succeeding to emulate any human qualities, all it does is make me feel worse about the fact that I am going into the unknown, a concept that when I was younger, seemed alien to me, faithful though I am to Jesus and everything written in the bible, I still shudder at the idea that the end contains nothing, that all worldly pursuits are irrelevant because we get nothing at the end, even the most faithful in the world must surely wake up some time and fear the dark, because, though proof has been given as to what awaits us, we still can only be certain once we are taken from this world. 

CF23 submachine gun has 7 clips left, use?

“Yes”

Weapon active

If I am going to die, I might as well take as many of these guys with me; no one wants to go to hell alone, besides if God’s judgement awaits us all, I might as well get a Jury to go in my prosecution for my sins, if that is what you can call them, patriotism and protection of human values are no sins to me, but if every soldier is a patriot then no one is truly in the wrong.

I am honestly amazed at how much insight we can have before the moment of our deaths, we can process in a few seconds that in a world not dominated by the time frame of our deaths would take us decades.

Here goes everything; I can only hope that my replacement can do better than I did.

And with that agent James Henries left the basement, running out of the open doors and into the rainy night, the moon barely visible through the clouds, and took on the hordes of NASDEC forces firing at his location, Henries quickly took cover behind a mud wall that used to belong to a house of a previous tribal family who were long gone from this hell, soon the wall looked like the cheese that you would see in any child’s cartoon, riddled with holes and not really very good cover anymore, so Henries quickly turned across a gap and crouched underneath a metal barrier, erected in a war that was decades old, yet the same feeling remained, lots of craters where someone’s house may have once stood, the very air tinged with the aura of death, none of this was making this easier for Henries, who knew that he soon, would join the republic of the dead, where status, rank and importance held nothing, only the memory of what once was.

Henries took the very next opportunity to fire his black submachine gun in short controlled bursts that were dropping some of the NASDEC soldiers who were shooting him from behind the cover of their own metal walls, their metal walls however were in fact, big walking gun turrets with people inside them, walkers were not easy to destroy because of their unique titanium armour. James continued firing at the oncoming soldiers, stopping only to reload and dive to another place where there was sufficient cover hoping that this distraction would prevent them from even thinking about checking the building in which the datasphere was hidden.

Henries was on his third clip when a sniper’s bullet entered his leg, causing his bones to shatter, leaving a neat round hole, but it was far from over, the agent activated the nanites in his body and set them to rebuild the bone and skin tissue, with the stored memory of what his leg was like, the nanites set about creating clones of the body tissue which was there before the sniper’s bullet had removed it, the agent was still firing at his assailants as his leg slowly healed from what would have been considered an unbearable blow 20 years ago, with the assistance of Nanotechnology, James Henries was soon able to get back on his feet and continue his war on the people who had done him wrong…

The war lasted less than 30 seconds, the war ended as a bullet ripped the base of his spine from the rest of his body and left a spatter of gleaming maroon blood all over the sand of one small part of Papua New Guinea, however soon the rain washed away the blood, all that agent Henries had worked for would come to reckoning on one thing, the performance of his successor.

Following protocol, all of the nanites in agent Henries body immediately expanded, causing his body to explode violently, leaving no trace of his existence.

Chapter 1
The Prodigy Born


“Simon Henries, reporting for duty sir”
How long had he waited for this day? 13 years, since he seen the recruitment posters at 12 years old, he knew that what he wanted to do was become an enforcer, serving the people with the aid of the Nanotechnological mechanisms that would become part of his body, with augmentation which would allow him to perform the greatest feats imaginable, he had reasoned with his parents that it was the only life for him, they had graciously placed him in the academy and there he was the only one in his year to graduate, and now, he was ready to become an enforcer, just like his brother, who he was told had the same story.

“Simon Henries, the man himself, I was wondering when I would get to meet you, you’re shorter than I had expected” 
This of course was a joke as Simon Henries was 6”5 and well built, he could have been a candidate for the role of Conan given his size and physical strength, however his physique was not just because of the hard training that he had undergone at the academy, but also because of the microforbial muscle enhancements that were part of his Nanotechnological augmentations, that coupled with his jet black hair and steely blue eyes, he could have scared the wits out of anyone just by looking at them, that would be, if he didn’t seem so approachable.

“Sir I have been told to report here once my training was complete”

“And here you are, splendid, you have got quite the reputation according to the academy, you should make an excellent addition to our force, however, before you are briefed on your first operation, you must first go to see Joseph down in the lower levels, he should be in his med lab, you are supposed to undergo some physical checks before you take upon any duties”.
The speaker here was Commander Adrian Jenson, a military man through and through, at 72 years old, he was showing signs of age, with thinning white hair and a size of 5”8, he was given command of the Global Agent Enforcement Corporation as a low stress job that he could cope with, his military record was respected throughout the UNMF (United Nations Military Force) made him the ideal candidate for being an agent’s handler.

Simon Henries made his way to one of the lower levels of the GAEC compound, into a large room with 2 adjoining corridors, one leading to the Medical lab and armoury, another leading to the cellblock, the area was remarkably nondescript, a blue carpet was one of only a few hint of colour in a large room dominated by grey walls and a grey ceiling, a brown sofa of high quality leather sat in one of the corners of the main room, adjacent to two toilet rooms, something else was absent from this area, it was hard to figure it out though, upon determining that the area highlighted as “MEDICAL LABORATORY” was most likely to be the med lab which commander Adrian had sent him to, Simon moved down the left corridor and into the med lab, to be greeted by an Asian-American man, probably in his early 30s, Simon looked the man up and down, came to the conclusion that he must have been Joseph and listened to what he had to say.
“Mr Henries, remarkable, you have a stunning resemblance to your brother, as you may know he is currently in some African country, so the chances are you will be told apart by your tans, he looks almost exactly like you!”
“I haven’t seen my brother since he left for the academy, I can barely remember his appearance, but I will take your word for it… Joseph?” replied Simon
“Yes I am Joseph Mendel, and might I say, it is an honour to meet you, the academy ratings board sent you on with the ‘prodigy’ rating, there is no higher achievement available from the United Nations Training Programme that you took, anyway, what is it that you want?”
The chubby doctor was positively beaming at having met Simon, who had hardly realised that he was the best ever at the course he took at the Elysium Academy, he just took it all in his stride.
“Mr Jenson has ordered me to come here for some ‘physical checks’, I am supposed to get this check up before I go on active duty” was Simon’s reply
Ah yes, the physical evaluation, this should be quite simple, I have to check that the nanites in your body are responding correctly”
“Is that likely to hurt?” asked Simon, who, though being an immensely strong man, shuddered at the idea of needles and the like, a fear shared by many, in the academy he once hid above the sills of a double door to avoid having a needle put in for his Quaker virus inoculation, something about needles scared him immensely.
“Not at all mister Henries, you must try respond in the ways that I set the nanites inside you to act, If you are in full control of your systems, you should be able to perform the correct movements and suppress the movements that have been red flagged, all will become clear in a second”
And with that, Simon started to move his right arm, then his left, gyrated both legs, and performed a roll between two glowing white hospital beds, before standing on his hands and flipping himself into a standing position, then he head butted a human anatomy chart which hung on the wall, getting one huge splinter stuck in his head.
“Ah, interesting” was Joseph Mendel’s appraisal
“If that is what you call interesting, I want to know what you would call bad! In case you didn’t notice, let me bring to your attention the piece of your poster’s backing, which is inside my head!” Simon Henries raged, suspecting that it was part of the evaluation, yet releasing his anger anyway, no sense in keeping it bottled up.

Henries wrenched the fragment out; there was no reason to keep it there, since the desired effect had not been achieved, so out it came.

“Why did you do that agent Henries?” asked Joseph
“Because, amazingly enough, it hurt, Mr Mendel, if you want to see for yourself I can put it in your head for you!” said Simon, now bleeding from the neat rectangular hole in his head.
“That will not be necessary agent” laughed Joseph “you performed 5 out of 6 of the required operations, the head butting of the wall was a red flagged action, you performed it because your brain allowed the action to process, that was caused by a feeling of heightened aggression, in a neutral mind, you would have done the correct action, which would have been, you performing a back flip onto one of the hospital beds, you are very similar to your brother in that respect, when it came to that challenge he had also head butted the wall, the term ‘he made an impression’ could not be seen more literally than here!”

Simon felt that the reply was rather matter of fact and, to be honest, condescending, there was no explanation offered as to why he was processing aggressive activities, and he figured that none was about to come his way, and why on earth did the medtech put a wooden board where his brother had hit? Surely there was some form of danger control in place to make sure that events such as this were not repeated, however it seemed to be part of the test, the knowledge that his brother had also done it was reassuring, he was not alone in his clumsiness, and there was someone who shared his character traits, this was a nice feeling to have, overshadowed however by a rising curiosity as to why on earth there was no assistance being provided for the gash which was must be in his forehead, as wooden boards going through your head tend to make a bit of a mess.

“Okay then, I will pretend to understand what you just said, can you at least provide some form of bandage or plaster to cover up this gash in my head?” enquired Simon.

“What gash?” replied the doctor

Turning around to notice a mirror on the wall opposite to the hospital beds, Simon seen his reflection, and upon further observation, he realised that there was no gash in his head anymore.

“The nanites in your body have repaired all of the body tissue around your head, in combat, they will set to work in approximately two minutes, any damaged part of your body can be repaired” explained the doctor, now leaning on the doorway, observing Simon’s response, which was, quite simply a look of absolute awe. “That concludes your evaluation, you are free to go, but do a favour for me when you go back to Adrian will you? Tell him that his replacement leg is ready”.

“Replacement… leg?”

“Yes, a nasty accident with an acid pool downstairs, one week ago we were dumping some excess acid which was confiscated from a terrorist group in a water pumping facility in northern Scotland, we could only surmise that they planned to place the acid into the water supply and contaminate the north of Scotland’s water supply, we managed to get it back to the compound for safe disposal, but a passing repair bot punctured one of the seals and acid flooded the disposal unit, Adrian was in the area and managed to activate the emergency dumping unit, but the acid had eat away at his left leg, I had a copy of his legs DNA and physical configuration, it didn’t take long for the medical nanites here to flash clone his leg in one of my canisters, it was just requiring a few tune-ups, we will be able to re apply his leg as soon as he is ready”.

Everything that was just said went way over the head of agent henries, but he did not show it, he simply nodded and tried to make some kind of sense of what the doctor was talking about, but failed, and drew the conclusion that the nanites could repair anything and his commander was about to get a new leg, which, in all honesty, was all he needed to know.

“Very well doctor, I will relay your message to him, hopefully I won’t have to come here too often” was Simon’s reply

“Why not?” said the doctor, blocking the doorway, seeming rather upset at the news, “was it something I said?”

“No, I just meant that, well I hope that I won’t have such bad injuries that will cause me to have to come here”

“What?”
“Just forget it, alright? I like you, you are a nice guy, but I just don’t want to get hurt too bad”

“Okay then, I will see you later then agent”, Mendel stood away from the brown door, allowing agent Henries to pass, who was a little confused as to why Mendel couldn’t process the idea that he didn’t want to have to see him under the normal circumstances of having to see a combat doctor.

Simon went upstairs into the large room that lead to the offices and computer control, made his way into Adrian Jenson’s office, past the secretary and struck up conversation with his commander, not before checking below his oak desk, noticing only now that he was absent a leg, Joseph better not have been joking when he said a replacement was ready.

“Sir, the doctor said that your replacement leg is ready”, and Simon Henries had just scored top place on the ‘worst conversation starters’ leader board.

  “Ah good, it has been like forever, I trust that your medical evaluation was successful?”

“You could say that,” said Simon, accompanying his reply with a shrug of his shoulders

“Good, that means that you are more or less ready for active duty” said Adrian, flicking between folders in his ‘in’ tray until he found a blue one marked ‘EPSILON’ and read aloud the description: “approximately 25 armed terrorists have taken control of a shopping centre in Glasgow, they claim to be affiliated with the Epsilon group, a left wing paramilitary terrorist crew, looking for representation of their so called ‘civil liberties’ which they claim to have had taken from them, their demands are all bog standard stuff, they want the right to smoke in public places, the right to organise fights on the street, really foolish stuff, and- get this, a 50% discount at a shop of their choosing! There is no way that they are serious about this, however it should prove an ideal test for you, when you are ready just go to the armoury, load up and head out, we are looking for a low body count on this one, knocking them out should be sufficient, chances are that they will surrender once you capture their leader, if they have one that is, they don’t seem too organised.”

“Anything else?” asked Simon after he wrote all of the data to his computerised memory banks.
 
“Negative, you are free to go agent”

Simon worked his way back downstairs and into the armoury, where he met another character, ex-General Jack Grater, who was missing an eye, shown no signs of Nanotech repairs and seemed like the sort who had no interest in receiving any, he looked the agent up and down (something that was becoming an annoying regularity here, people seemed to be sizing him up or something)

“Agent, you will be here for some weaponry to take on those commies at the shopping mall I take it?”
“Left wing paramilitaries sir”

“Like I said, commies, in my day we could shoot ‘em dead without having to worry about low body count and that, but orders are orders, so I am going to give you this stun prod, which should incapacitate anyone it touches for at least an hour, and I will also provide you with this wrist dart firing mechanism, it is like one of those medieval crossbows, only it fires tranquilliser darts from your wrist and it is extremely compact, unnoticeable in a metal detector too, you shouldn’t need anything else but I think no one would notice if a 9mm pistol were to disappear, putting caps in commies is what got me to my rank in the military, I think it should to the same for you.”

It was only after Jack’s little speech that Simon noticed that he must be well into his eighties and still going strong, no wonder he hated communists and other such left wing extremists, he would have been in ‘Nam, he was definitely American, it was hardly concealed by his accent, he could have been a Texan, only one way to find out…

“Ever been to Kentucky sir?”

“Excuse me? What makes you think that I would associate myself with such cowards? They are worse than the damn Frenchies in a battle, you watch your tone with me boy, I once nearly shot your brother for asking me if I wanted a Kentucky Fried Chicken!”

Yep, definitely a Texan, however it was interesting that his brother would try to reveal Grater’s home state in a similar way, perhaps the medtech in the other room had a point, they definitely seemed to have a similarity in their methodology, Simon quickly logged this in his memory banks (which were engineered to be visually accessible, nanites inside his brain would be able to hold an encyclopaedic memory of everything that he experienced in life, he was able to flag his revelation as to his similarity to his brother, making it something which pends further investigation).


Simon took the weapons with a muttered “thanks” before turning and walking out of the room, looking left and right to see if anyone else wanted to give him the whole look-over, and as he turned right he came face to face with a tall yet thin man, wearing a black tank top and the most ridiculously low cut jeans that Simon had seen, before Simon had time to ask the man to move the fashion reject said “Hi! I’m Brian, nice to finally meet you sir!”
Sir? This seems weird, not one of the few of characters at this compound that Simon had met was calling him “sir”, and this mysterious man was already extending his hand, expectant of a handshake, seeming to be paying him the utmost respect, which Simon appreciated, but found to be beyond weird, Simon took the mans hand and shook it, “I’m Sim-”
“Agent Simon Clancy Henries, Private first class, GAEC special forces contingent, the second complete agent from the prodigy operation, I read your file sir, and I have to say your performance at the academy was inspiring!”

This man had access to his character files, his personal records and knew his second name, which he had taken from his father and never told anyone of, how did this man know so much?
Watching Simon stand there confused Brian decided to step in “Your files are kept on a secure server sir, compiled from when you started the academy, apart from your teachers, the agency commander and your parents, no one has access to them, and not even the best hackers could get into the system where your files are kept”
“But you-”
“Am better than the best sir, I designed the logicorp system that all modern military and secret service computers run on, trust me, Lonatech computing can’t even touch our levels of computer work, and fruitcom? Don’t get me started!”

Simon had no idea what this man was talking about, but he would venture a guess that he was quite the computer expert, he had run all his training on logicorp and it was the most streamlined and efficient computer system he had ever worked on, but what was this man doing here?

“If you must know sir, GAEC recruited me after I hacked their data files which contained your brother’s profile”

Did he just-?

“Yes sir, everything that passes through your mind is being brought up on my eye-cam system” He indicated a little blue light on the side of his retina, “I’m sorry sir, it comes with the package I am afraid, your implants and augmentations included cerebral upgrades as well, things that are at the front of your mind are coming up clear as day in my eyes, Adrian demanded it, it would be either that or you be assigned a partner, and your file shows what you did in your academy days”

Simon remembered, he had always outperformed Harper, his assigned work partner, up to the point where it became obvious that a partner would slow him down, as Harper often was still confused at the beginning of a stealth course after Simon had already run it and come out the other side, Simon eventually made his way back to help Harper get to the end, the craziest thing was that he still managed to complete the course faster than any of the other trainees, even with the fat young James Harper on his back.

“He disappeared after you were told to operate solo; there are no records of where he went, but I hope you see my point about the benefits of a solo agent with the assistance of a hacker buddy on the other side of his eyelids!”

“Brian, will you please stop getting my thoughts in your head for just one second, did you just get the outline of my memory in your eyes?”

“I did”

“Then do me a favour and only do it when it is absolutely necessary, there may be some things I want to keep to myself!”

TO BE CONTINUED, SOON HOPEFULLY