Activated

In this future, let's watch as an operative tries and fails to escape compliance.

Chapter 1 - Agent

"Janet Wren Lorune" That was the name that strobed gently right below the holographic image floating in the bathroom mirror. It stared back at her. One blue eye, the other a depthless black. The brows, heavy, furrowed, ears pinned tightly, lips compressed into a determined line. The scar that cut down from her shaved head, just bypassed her flared nostrils and terminated at a squared-off chin. The whiteness of the scar contrasted starkly to the chocolate brown of the skin about it. The line of text scrolled off to the left and was replaced by a glowing yellow glyph and a word. "Activated"

She stared at the glyph and the word. The frown deepened. She shook her head slowly, from side to side. The holographic image repeated the motion with impeccable fidelity. The word flickered and changed. The glyph remained. A new line of text resolved. "Report Status"

She shook her head again. "No!" The thought screamed through her head. "No." She vocalized the thought. She spoke through still compressed lips. Her voice - angry. "No! Dammit No!" She punched a fist through the holographic image, smashing into the mirror behind it.

The image reflected her motion showing a black and bronze limb suddenly rocketing forward. The line of text remained unmoved and unchanging. The glyph turned red.

And she screamed, both hands suddenly grasping her temples. Black and bronze, paired with another, a deep brown matching her face, now tilted back, mouth agape in the throes of some primordial pain.

"Arrrgh!" Janet's scream was animal like, and she tore at the skin of her face as she cried out. The glyph turned a deeper shade of red. The fingers on the bronze limb clenched with machine strength and ripped into the flesh, bringing forth a gout of fluid. White and tinged with red.

"Oh God NO!" The cry continued. Her voice climbing in octaves.

Then abruptly, she stopped. Her fingers ceased their clawing. Her face went utterly slack. Expressionless. The lips uncompressed. The frown -erased. The glyph spun briefly and bobbed. Then turned blue.

"Compliance." The word came softly. Her lips moved in an inhumanly perfect syncopation with the word.

"Compliance." She said it again. The blood leaking from the gashes on her face dripped down to the bowl beneath the now destroyed mirror. The holographic image bled too. Its blood disappearing into the word and glyph below.

***
In the room beside the bathroom where Janet's battle had just terminated, John sat on the floor, back to the wall. He peered closely at the little glowing screen on the pad in his hands. He formed a pincer with one hand and made a twisting motion. As if moving a dial. A new scream erupted from the bathroom and he smiled.

He hovered his thumb over a glowing square in the top corner of the pad. The image on the pad, was a miniature copy of the holograph Janet was facing. John pressed down firmly and lifted his gaze to the closed bathroom door. The scream cut off replaced by a low murmuring, barely audible through the flimsy plastic partition. A flick of his wrist and a holographic keyboard sprang up from the pad. He typed briefly.

"Operative activated. Mission parameters?"

He paused then poked the enter key. His finger passing through the wavering holographic keyboard. He stared at the screen, eyes narrowing slightly and he pursed his lips. Waiting.

The reply came back moments later. The pad went entirely blank and a tiny horse icon blinked in the center of the screen. The holographic keyboard disappeared. Then, scrolling text accompanied by a squall of machine noise.

John's eyes darted back and forth. He read the text as quickly as it flowed in. He cocked his head to the side as if listening. The words on the screen reflected on his eyes as they moved. "Primary Target: Deputy Executive Lee. Sanctioned. Terminal. Secondary Target: All security elements of his detail. Forty-two hours." The screen went dark again.

John sighed and tossed the pad aside. It landed noiselessly on the thin carpeting and he stood with a grimace. He bent at the waist and twisted his torso. "Too old for field work." The thought entered John's mind accompanied by an image of Doctor Uri as he went through his patient's full bio-diagnostic read out.

"You're almost at retirement John. In fact, you've outlived most spotters. You're playing against the odds now you do know that don't you?" Uri was looking at John with an intense but clinical curiosity. He raised a hand to his chin and sat back in the form fitting chair. "Your implants are nominal, but your neural pathways are showing material decay." He pointed a finger now at John who was standing at attention before him.

The desk separating them bare and glassy.

"I'm recommending that this be your last deployment." The finger was still pointed. Bony, the nail polished black and sharpened. The wrist, poking out of the crisp gray overall sleeve was a shocking white.

"Damned vat grown bastard is going to tell me what I can and cannot do? Fuck him!" John's thoughts did not materialize whatever on his face. He remained at attention and said nothing. "I can do this all day."

John shook his head and shivered slightly, returning to the present. He took a step towards the bathroom door and slid it aside.

The woman standing revealed was tall, boxy. Her shaved scalp shone, reflecting the light from the lumen strips only inches from the top of her head. She was clothed. The trousers, a metal woven fabric flared at the feet, covering the tops of uncomfortable looking heavy combat boots. John ran his gaze up the unmoving statue, his brow knitting as he eyed the torn jacket that covered her torso. Both her arms were held unmoving at her sides. The sleeves of the jacket had been ripped away and lay heaped at her feet.

He tapped her on the shoulder.

She turned smoothly. Torso then legs. And stared blankly down at him. A trickle of reddish-white fluid ran down from a wound just above the right eye.

"Mission?"

John held up one hand in front of him palm out, fingers splayed. "Primary target is Deputy Executive Lee." He paused and watched her face. There was no response. No movement. "Index character two-zero alpha. Retrieve from memory bank." He paused again to watch.

"Retrieving." Janet's face did not move. Only her lips. "Retrieved. Target locked." She raised her left hand and splayed the fingers in identical mirror to John's movement. "Secondary?"

John smiled slightly at that. "Gods, this is going to be a ride." He flared his nostrils anticipating the mayhem that was soon to be unleashed.

"Secondary is everything else. All security units are sanctioned. Mission clock is forty-two hours." He clenched his raised hand into a fist.

Janet imitated the movement, her bronze hand fisted then lowered to her side.

"Mission accepted." Janet brushed past him and strode towards the tiny hotel room's hallway door.

John flinched slightly as she passed him. The subtle scent of heated machine oil combined with a coppery smell wafted over him and he breathed deeply. "Mayhem unleashed." He looked at the shattered mirror then kicked the shards lying just below the sink.

Chapter 2 - Engage

Janet left the hotel room, pushing the heavy metal door open with one hand and stepping into the ferrocrete hallway beyond. She stopped and let the door swing back closed. She looked down both lengths of the corridor. No movement. None of the other dozen or so doors swung open. From one of the rooms, she heard the sounds of some sort of party. Shrill voices and thumping music.

She walked in the direction of the elevators, set to one end of the corridor. Her movements were the stamping, precise motion of a combat construct. There was no grace to her ambulation. It was military. Purposeful. She arrived at the elevators and paused again, scanning both sets. She caught her reflection in the polished surface of the closed elevator doors. Both of her eyes had turned a cerulean blue, and one was glowing. She ignored the reflection and moved past the elevator bank to take the stairs. An elevator was just a kill box.

As she stomped down the stairs, her hands began a movement all of their own. They extracted pieces of equipment from recesses and pockets in her jacket and pants. They assembled the pieces quickly without any hesitation and before she had descended the two floors to the lobby, a rifle with an underslung grenade launcher was cradled in one arm.

At the lobby door she leaned in closer, head turned in a listening motion. She pressed one ear to the door for several seconds. The sound of voices, clipped, terse came through, accompanied by the vibration of footsteps. Approaching the door. The steps sounded muffled, muted, likely by the deep pile of the lobby carpeting.

"Security team." Janet stepped back from the door, raised an oversized foot and in an almost cartoonishly violent gesture kicked the door entirely off its hinges. She turned the kick into a forward step and stamped on the door as it fell, her rifle shouldered and already blasting out rounds into the shocked crowd.

But the crowd was no normal crowd of idle tourists and civilians enjoying their hotel stay. This crowd was a mass of combat tested mercenaries. One of her bullets ripped into a mercenary, blasting through a lens of his stylish sunshades, causing him to tumble awkwardly into a graceless pile on the red and black carpeting. "Not Tier One." The thought flitted through Janet's consciousness unbidden, as she charged forward, sweeping the rifle about and loosing another burst of rounds into two men who were scrambling to bring their weapons online.

Back in the hotel room, John had taken the pad up again and was sitting on the floor cross-legged. The screen showed the lobby. It was a chaotic jumble of movements, but John read the violent scene easily. Three targets down. He gestured at the screen, and a holographic display sprang up all around him, and he was there in the lobby with Janet. Another gesture, a rotation of his wrist and the holograph jumped back a half second to the start of the combat.

He watched the first mercenary go down, eating a round to the face. He watched two more dance a morbid jig as they were caught by a burst from Janet's assault rifle. He saw her kick a huge rotund male right in the genitals as he braced a large pistol into firing position.

She was just warming up.

John turned his head even as Janet began executing her next move. He could see hotel staff scattering, running like flightless pigeons as they bolted for the cover of some back room. He turned back to look along Janet's line of sight. Just in time to watch her launch a grenade into a table around which was crowded a host of suited and dignified luminaries. Most had their mouths agape in shock as they tried to comprehend a new and violent reality.

Some screamed as they realized what was happening. Too late for them, the grenade exploded just above the table, metal shards eviscerating and slicing through everything present. Janet's charge continued. The grenade launch, the rifle fire was all choreographed balletic dance. Her stamping movements a background drumbeat. She stepped forward with surety, and her hands snapped the magazine from her rifle, replacing it with a fresh box that she had pulled out of a side-pocket of her armored pants.

She sidestepped and opened fire again. A sustained burst. The rifle moved with millimetric precision. Left to right. Head height. Suppression.

Ten seconds into the fight and not a single shot had been fired back at her.

John grinned as he watched. "Tier Three at best." He vocalized his thought. "This garbage is ..."

At that very moment the door to the hotel room caved inward and then was yanked out of its frame and into the corridor. An enormous figure filled the suddenly empty doorframe. And the figure was holding a massive multi barreled rotary cannon, pointed unequivocally at John.

John did not hesitate. Despite that he was immersed in the holographic display of Janet's assault, he was not slow to react to the immediate threat. He jumped to his feet. A snake-like uncoiling of limbs. Triggering his implants, he dove for the bathroom.

The figure in the doorway was equally unhesitating. Although featureless behind some ballistic mask covering its entire head, John was sure it was laughing. The crushing rumble of noise coming from it confirmed that. It was a chuckle. The grotesque noise was completely subsumed when it triggered the cannon.

The cannon screamed to life and bullets began to spray out, chasing John's diving form into the bathroom.

"Oh God. What the actual fuck!?" John's thoughts were a chaotic rush, but his implants cooled them, injecting him with a chemical cocktail. Adrenaline spiked, but his mind entered a logical combat mode. His vision suddenly switched to infrared mode and the world around him slowed. As he dove, he could see the barrels of the assault cannon spinning. All seven of them. "What? That's nonstandard, only Orgus Industries makes a seven barrel. Maybe it'll jam!" He could see the thermal bloom as each round exited on a contrail of burning propellants.

He slammed into the bathroom floor and slid, slicing his palms on the detritus from Janet's struggle with the mirror. The cannon was still pumping out rounds behind him, the sound attenuated and distant. He rose and jumped through the scratched transparent plastic of the bathroom window. The implants in his legs gave him instant power. The claws that had extended from the back of one arm extended outwards and their carbide hardened edges smashed and exploded the plastic.

Windmilling his arms, John looked back up as he fell the two stories to the stinking alley floor. With the slow motion granted by the chemical surge, and the optic enhancements that accompanied implant activation, he could see every detail of the window he had just exited.

An eternity of a second after bursting through the window he impacted the alley floor. The bags of waste and discarded material softened and absorbed some of his momentum. Nonetheless a warning glyph appeared in his visual field. Red and blinking. Damage to lower limb.

John ignored the warning, blinking it away, still staring up at the window and began to hobble down the alley towards the street. He had barely taken a dozen steps when the window broke apart further still. The wall it was set in burst open and that giant figure began to thrust its way through. It paused a moment and pointed the assault cannon at John. It laughed once more. This time a burbling gargle of atonal noise. And then the cannon triggered again.

The spray of bullets was utterly enveloping. They slammed into John, smashing him to the ground to skid forward on his belly. He never made it to the alleyway entrance. The cannon's sustained fire tore his body to shreds, scattering metal and organic parts everywhere. It dismembered him and turned the remains into an unidentifiable slop of once living flesh.

With the drugs still active, John experienced his own death stretched out across a forever of time. He could hear screams of terror coming from the alley mouth. Even in this jaded city, a firefight with military grade weapons was bound to create some reaction. He felt the bullet impacts and watched as his cranial implant tallied the damage. The list was long and strobing red. When it finally stopped scrolling it was replaced by a single word. "Terminal." John's sight clipped off abruptly at that. But as it did, a final thought rode through his synapses. "I should have retired."


Chapter 3 - Terminus

Back in the lobby, Janet, unaware of her spotter's demise continued her assault. But her motions dragged, slowed. The rifle ran dry and she fumbled at the magazine. "Warning. Controller Disconnected. Shutdown Imminent." Text scrolled across her vision, and she dropped the rifle from suddenly slack hands.

She stumbled as she continued forward on sheer momentum. Voices barked at her from some cosmic distance. Her stumble turned into a fall as her legs froze, and she crashed to the carpet face down.

"Shutdown In Four, Three, Two --" Janet's vision exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors then winked off. At that same moment, in the infinitesimal slice of time between on and off, her conscious mind reasserted itself and it screamed. A piercing wail that only she could hear. It went on and on. Her existence was lightless; the scream erupted from some depth of soul that she resided in. She tried to move her limbs. Nothing. She could only hear herself scream.

As Janet fell, two of the remaining mercenaries rose from their cover behind overturned furniture and ran towards her position. The machine-pistols they carried stuttered fire in her general direction. One of the would-be toughs tripped over her body as it lay sprawled like a frozen military mannequin. He shouted in shock as he impacted the floor, while his friend, exhibiting superior reflexes fired several shots into Janet's back and legs.

The bullets did little to the body which did not move at all. The mercenary reached down and touched her, then rolled her over onto her back, his weapon readied and aimed.

Seeing no movement, he stepped back and then shouted over his shoulder. "Clear! Attacker was a woman. Alpha class operative. She's down. I got her!" He raised his pistol to a ready position as he yelled.

His buddy rose from his sprawl and walking over to Janet, kicked her in the shoulder. No reaction. Her eyes were open. Both were black. No white of the eye, no iris. Just an undifferentiated black.

"That was it? Gods, I thought we were dead for sure!" The mercenary aimed another kick. He was stopped suddenly by a heavy tread just behind him. He spun to face the new figure, his weapon thrusting out in front of him. And stopped his spin to come to an abrupt and crisp attention. His fellow behind him did the same. Both saluted at the diminutive woman who came to a stop at Janet's head and squatted down smoothly.

"Her partner's dead in the alleyway. Gowtham got him. You two," She gestured at the two mercenaries with one gloved hand. "Bring her to the lab." She stood. "Turn this bitch around and aim her at Janus. See how he and his precious board like being on the receiving end."

"Yes, Madam Colonel!" Both mercenaries shouted their responses as if on a parade ground.

Colonel Richay Richards sighed and eyed her mercenaries with a coldly negligent look. She took off her gloves and made a dusting motion over the rank pips in the high collar of her uniform. Then she stepped over Janet and walked through the stairwell door. Her military fatigues in mottled gray and browns of urban combat were a custom fit, her movements smooth, precise and athletic. Completely at odds with the short cropped gray hair atop her head.

As she passed through the shattered stairway door she spoke again. Her voice floating back to her men with an almost preternatural clarity. "Clean this place up and tell client Lee that he is safe now."

Both mercenaries held their salutes while Richay disappeared through the stairway door. One of the men started talking into his wrist the moment Richay left the room. "Get an evac team in here now!" He knelt down and started patting down Janet's body, extracting weapons and ammunition until a small pile had been created at her feet.

They were joined by several more men and women. Each of the newcomers wearing the same camouflage gear as Colonel Richards. Together they picked Janet's immobile and, cursing at the weight carried her out through the back of the building past several hotel staffers some of whom were cowering fearfully in badly selected hideaways in the kitchen.

The Ural transport waiting in the parking lot directly behind the hotel was surrounded by a grim set of troopers all sporting grim looks and large assault rifles. The six-wheel combat vehicle was scarred and an undecorated brown. The troopers carrying Janet struggled to lift her into the cargo bay. Janet's head slammed into the armored side and her whole body suddenly jerked. Her legs cycled, pantomiming a step.

The troopers yelled in shock and dropped her body, pulling at their weapons as they did.

Her body crunched into the ground and again stopped moving. A violent doll, posed and then thrown to the ground.

The troopers ringed the body, weapons pointed. They eyed each other hesitantly. Then a giant voice from shouted from the hotel doorway. "Get her loaded! She's offline for the duration." Gowtham's massive weight crunched over the cobbled surface in the parking lot, and he loomed in over the troopers. He had stowed the cannon to a carry position on his back and squatting down he picked Janet up and then rose up like a weightlifter and simply tossed her into the Ural.

"Like this!" He slapped his hands together in a dusting motion then twirled one hand in the air. "Mount up! Richay wants this mission wrapped now!" He pivoted then stepped up to the Urals cab and hauled himself in with one massive hand on the door frame. He pulled the stowed cannon across his body and settled it into his lap, and with an entirely deliberate indifference put his feet up on the dash

The troopers scrambled to obey. Unlike with Rachay there were no salutes. No crisp attentiveness to form. There was however an acid scent of fear. Most of them climbed into the cargo bay where Janet had been so unceremoniously thrown. They took up seating around her and left her on the bed of the vehicle. Others climbed on tri-wheeled urban deployment transports.

In seconds they had formed up into a convoy and had accelerated out of the lot turning onto the main street the Ural leading the way, bulldozing vehicles and people aside.