When Rebecca first began this mission, she thought about her new life as a spy or a secret agent, or whatever they were training her to be, running technical support for a special operations task force, she never imagined how much time she’d spend flying. Kelly and Connor were admitted to an infirmary at the military base in Afghanistan for treatment before they could return to Tokyo which meant that for Rebecca it was a long and lonely flight, of which she spent the majority worrying about her captain. The incident played over and over in her mind. She was tired of things doing that, repeating in her head until there she had room to think about anything else. She spent the entire flight thinking about how she hadn’t spotted the booby trap, and how her teammates nearly died because of it. Lives depended on her now.
Back at Tokyo HQ the first thing she did was sleep, and when she woke up, Boris and Yuri and Akira were nowhere to be found. Rebecca walked into the briefing room and fell onto the couch, opened her laptop and stared at a blank screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard but she didn’t know what to do with them. Her head felt cloudy and she needed the captain to issue her orders. She sighed and closed the laptop.
It was a nice night, cold, and quieter than usual on the streets of Tokyo. Rebecca walked along the road with her hands in her pockets and her head down. She wandered away from the built-up areas as far from the major complex as she could get, averting her eyes every time a blinding headlight shot by and shivering when a hover car sent a cold wind down at her. A section of a nearby park was flourishing with light and movement and chatter. Rebecca strolled over to investigate, picking up on the protest vibe from the regular chanting and the silhouettes of picket signs, not to mention the hologram reading: Anti-World-Government, in both English and Japanese.
Another passer-by stopped and stood near Rebecca to investigate the protest as well. She leaned closer to him. ‘This is for real?’ she asked, in her best Japanese. ‘They can’t seriously expect to change anything, can they?’
The man shrugged. ‘Maybe they aren’t trying to change anything. Maybe they just want themselves to stay the unchanged.’
The protestors called out about freedom of nation and the abuse of technological power, governments implementing global systems of control, using mega-corporations like Nexus to unify and subdue. Rebecca agreed with the protestors, for the most part, putting aside the fact that technically she was an agent of the UN. She was also still a hacker, underneath, a rebel at heart. But she didn’t care about the system, she didn’t give a damn about heartless capitalists using technology as a means of defining who she was because no one could work a computer like she could. She refused to be a slave to technology.
The protestors went on and on, shouting their justice to a night sky tarnished with polluted light. They had set up VR decks to demonstrate some kind of resistance simulation art piece. Rebecca left them alone and made her way back to headquarters. She had to stop wasting time, no more distractions, no procrastinating, while her captain still recovered. She had work to do.
A fresh pot of coffee had brewed when Rebecca received an unexpected call. She answered while she poured the coffee.
‘Captain?’
‘Rebecca, I have a training exercise that I’d like you to assist me with.’
Rebecca sipped her coffee. ‘Aren’t you in the infirmary?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about me. Get to your VR deck. I’ll text you the server code.’
Kelly hung up.
With a hint of concern and a great deal of curiosity going through Bec’s mind she went to her bunk and picked up her VR Immersion device. She inputted the server code, attached the device, and laid back.
Loading sequence. Then wind, a sea breeze and the crash of waves on the beach. Rebecca’s toes sank into the cool sand as the spray from the ocean blew over her body. The yellow radiance of the horizon melted into a hazy purple dusk. She looked away from the ocean to the glowing skyline of an unfamiliar city.
‘Stand ready, soldier,’ the captain shouted across the beach. Rebecca reflexively put her feet together and straightened her back, although she remained a little puzzled. Kelly walked over with a hint of a grin on her lips. ‘At ease.’
Kelly was dressed in full combat uniform, including a tactical visor, with her sniper rifle slung over her back. Rebecca noticed right away that a few changes had been made to the weapon. Kelly pulled it around and showed the new scope.
‘I have some modifications I want to test out,’ the captain said. ‘Mostly the scope, I need to make sure the electronics are working properly, and then after I want you to try and disable them remotely.’
‘Make sure the enemy can’t shut down our weapons systems,’ said Bec, realising now what this was all about.
‘That’s right.’ The captain looked Rebecca up and down. ‘I’ll need you to gear up. Load your combat equipment.’
A moment later Rebecca wore a uniform similar to the captain’s, and had her Barret FN92 on her belt holster and a military smartphone in her jacket pocket.
‘So, what is all this?’ Bec gestured at the beach and the glowing city.
‘It’s a training simulation that I like to use, it gives you a number of targets within the area of operations – in this case, three – and it puts them in hard-to-get locations. This time, because it’s sniper training, we’ll be doing trick-shots. I need you to spot and track the targets.’
Rebecca stifled a grin. This sounded like fun.
‘Alright, but I’ll need a micro-drone to run scans.’
The captain agreed. ‘Load one up.’
Once the drone was airborne Kelly and Rebecca moved towards the city, away from the sand dunes where the ground flattened out further away from the ocean. They reached suburbia just as Rebecca received a notification that one of the targets had been found. She pulled the location up and transmitted it to her mini holoprojector, creating a map. In the final light of the day she spotted the shed where the target was hiding.
‘So, what’s new with the scope?’ Bec asked as they made their way to a suitable sniping position.
‘I had Boris install that friendly-fire tactical safety of yours.’
Bec raised her eyebrows. ‘You did?’
‘Yeah, it’s good tech, we need more of it. Also, like I said, there’s new electronics; better HUD, thermal mode—’ She slid the scope to the side and aimed using the iron-sights. ‘Hybrid sights. What I really need to calibrate is the computer, it calculates the probability of whether your shot will hit the target, factoring wind, bullet drop, penetration…’ The captain laid down on the grass and set up the bipod, then powered the scope and loaded a round into the chamber.
‘What’s the success rate?’ Bec asked.
‘It’s only wood,’ said Kelly, aiming through the scope at the side of the shed. ‘95%.’
The feed from the drone directed to Rebecca’s smartphone, showing the target’s silhouette in red. He paced back and forth.
Silence. The captain was perfectly still. A slow exhale. She fired. The wall of the shed busted open with splinters and dust. The crack from the sniper rifle echoed through the night sky. Rebecca checked the feed. Target eliminated.
‘Nice work,’ said Kelly, looking up over the scope. ‘Alright, let’s keep moving.’
They continued on through suburbia until they reached the built-up area where about 50% of a regular city’s population worth of NPCs mindlessly wandered the streets – whoever designed this VR server was clearly focused on testing weapons, not providing realistic civilians. At the same time, however, any one of these civilians was potentially one of the targets, but it seemed unlikely, as the program they designed put targets in areas that tested the weapon’s parameters.
Another notification, the second target had been spotted and was apparently flying through the city in a hover car. Rebecca showed it to Kelly on the map and said, ‘What are your odds with this shot?’
‘It’s not impossible,’ Kelly replied, her eyes scanning the airways for the target.
Rebecca got to work. ‘Maybe I can hack the autopilot, stop the car in mid-air, that’ll give you a shot.’
‘Well, yeah, but not a very challenging one.’
‘He’s going a hundred and ten kilometres an hour – in the air. Are you sure?’
The captain thought for a moment, her gaze falling over the city lights as she gave the command, ‘Hack the autopilot and pull up the GPS route.’
Rebecca accessed the system and found a file containing the autopilot’s schematics, then uploaded the route to her holoprojector map, indicated by a white line that followed the airways through and around the city but eventually met back up with itself.
‘It’s just going in circles.’
‘Let me see,’ Kelly leaned over and studied the map, then pointed to a building overlooking a long stretch of road. ‘Here, that’s our sniper nest.’
It took some time to reach the building and then take the elevator to the top floor and find the roof access. A gust of wind knocked Rebecca back as she stepped out onto the roof. She walked up to the edge where a two-foot wall prevented Kelly from taking her shot from a comfortable prone position. The city looked so alive from up here, and endlessly vibrant.
‘What’s the target’s position?’ said Kelly, propping her weapon up on the wall and aiming down the sights.
Rebecca checked her phone. The micro-drone had highlighted the hover car in white and the target in red.
‘Rounding the corner now.’ She looked at Kelly. ‘Is the augmentation working? Electronics still fine?’
‘I see him,’ Kelly replied, without moving her gaze. ‘I see him…’ Her rifle moved ever so slowly, tailing the movement of the hover car.
Rebecca had to admit she was sceptical that her captain could make the shot, but she’d also witnessed Kelly’s particular talent for marksmanship, and eventually wagered a fifty-fifty chance.
Kelly fired. Once again, the crack of the shot echoed through the city and made Rebecca jump. She watched the hover car with her binoculars. The windscreen shattered, the car veered off course, clipped the edge of a building and spiralled into the street below, breaking to pieces and bursting into flame and a dense pillar of smoke.
‘Damn,’ said Bec as she put her binoculars away. ‘I take back what I said.’
The captain packed up her rifle and slung it back over her shoulder.
‘Two down, one to go.’
They returned to the street and walked past the burning crumpled remains of the hover car. The NPC civilians paid no attention to it. Kelly and Rebecca had nothing to do until the micro-drone picked up on the third target’s location.
‘So, how’s the recovery going?’ Bec had noticed that the captain’s injuries hadn’t been adapted into her VR residual image.
The captain looked at her hands, apparently also expecting to see bandages, and said, ‘It was just a few minor cuts and burns, some bruising. Trust me, I’ve had worse.’
‘Well from one victim to another you seem to be doing alright. I never knew you were allowed VR decks in the infirmary. Wouldn’t it mess with your vitals?’
‘If I was at risk of having a seizure,’ Kelly asserted, ‘they wouldn’t have let me do it. I use VR a lot when I’m sick. I get restless when I’m recovering. That’s why I like these training sims.’
‘Sounds like you’ve “recovered” a lot.’ Rebecca didn’t mean to sound so concerned. She was trying to make a joke.
The third notification.
Rebecca pulled out her phone. ‘Hey, we got our last target.’ She uploaded the location to the holoprojector map. ‘Looks like he’s in that building.’
The captain looked a little closer.
‘Zoom in.’
The map switched to a detailed image of the target’s building.
‘I get it… His desk is in the back of the room. Oh, now this will be a trick shot. Scan for potential sniper points.’
Rebecca ran the scan but nothing came up. ‘Um, unless you can bend bullets you don’t have a shot.’ She considered the building across from the target, pointing out one of the floors about halfway up. ‘What about here?’
Kelly shook her head. ‘Those windows don’t open. I could shoot through it but it might mess up the bullet trajectory. I mean, we could cut a hole in the glass…’ Her gaze then lifted up to the roof. ‘No, I have a better idea. Load up an abseiling cable.’
They entered the lobby and underwent the long elevator ride to the top floor and the roof access. The captain paced across the roof and looked through her binoculars at the target’s floor. The man still sat at his desk, out of reach. Kelly leaned against the guard-rail and peered down at the street below. Then, she put on the harness and clipped the cable to the guardrail.
Rebecca realised what the captain was doing and said, ‘Are you serious?’
‘Gotta improvise when you’re doing this kind of thing.’
Kelly set up her rifle, tested the sights again, then vaulted over the edge, sailing down the length of the building in a controlled descent. She slowed until she was level with the target and then stopped. With her feet planted against the window, she stood almost horizontally, suspended by the cable. She raised her weapon, focused down the sights. Silent. Still.
She fired. The bullet penetrated the glass, the target collapsed over his desk, and a messy splatter of blood and brains painted the wall. Rebecca double checked the feed on her phone. No reading. He was dead. Target eliminated.
Rebecca applauded the captain as she climbed back over the railing.
‘That was some fine shooting, captain.’
‘Thank you.’
Kelly put her rifle aside and sat down, Rebecca sitting beside her. They enjoyed the view of the city for a little while longer. The simulation would eventually disconnect them, now that they had completed their mission.
‘Make sure you install the security measures for the scope as soon as you have time,’ said Kelly.
Rebecca nodded. ‘Sure thing. We’re gonna have to jack out soon.’ She turned and shook Kelly’s hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure training with you, captain. Get better soon, yeah? We need you back at HQ.’
The captain nodded. ‘Roger that.’
Sounds became muffled. The city lights faded. Exiting sequence…
Rebecca opened her eyes and sat up in her bunk. Her coffee had gone cold.
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