Dan dragged his ass over to another training exercise. He silently allowed himself some relief since Allen Draco wasn’t nearly as harsh as Jane was. Still, Allen was still following Jane’s custom-planned training regime.
Already three rounds in, Dan and Allen engaged in the same familiar exercise when Dan was newly recruited. Dan was positioned on one side of the arena and was tasked in preventing Allen from reaching a certain point of the area. Allen’s goal was to evade Dan and reach the point.
In the first round, Dan had gotten lucky and scored a headshot that would have killed or severely injured Allen had he not been wearing a helmet. Dan had just completed training with Jane for six hours and was poised and on his guard. That set the tone for the rest of the session and Allen adapted.
The next two rounds of this proved a challenge for Dan. He pulled out every trick he could think of. Grenades, misdirection and even coming down from his elevated position and onto ground level to face Allen head on. While Allen was still an upper tier two in capability, it didn’t change the fundamental fact that Dan had a weapon and Allen didn’t.
However, Allen proved why he was close to being promoted to being a tier three. In the second round, Allen evaded all of Dan’s attempts to kill him. Allen had taken the win for the next two rounds and now they began a fourth round.
Objective: Prevent Allen Draco from reaching the designated point.
Your opponent is allotted two minutes.
Start!
Dan’s weapon of choice was a modified ZK-77 assault rifle that had its bayonets swapped out for an underbarrel grenade launcher. These grenades were the special incendiary class and would pose a threat to Allen.
Let’s see what this new gun can do, Dan thought.
As if reading his mind, Allen contacted him through the private channel and said, “A big gun doesn’t make a big man.”
“Look who’s talking,” Dan spat. “You carry RPGs and miniguns for a living. You’re jealous that I have access to similar firepower just for this exercise and you got nothing but your armor and your wits.”
“I’m winning two to one, Dan. Let’s see if you can try any new tricks this round,” Allen jokingly said.
It wasn’t hard for Dan’s eyes to make out the distant dark speck at the other end of the arena. Allen was gradually making his way towards the designated zone. Dan fired in controlled bursts at the approaching agent. None of them hit and Dan knew it. Allen had adapted to Dan’s fire pattern and could seemingly easily predict where the bullets would hit.
Even Dan was unsettled by this. He wondered if he would ever become this good at predicting his enemy’s moves and move and act with such precision and grace. To an outside observer, Allen’s ability to dodge and anticipate Dan’s gunfire patterns and intervals between bursts was borderline clairvoyant.
The only thing Dan had that he hadn’t used yet was the underbarrel grenade launcher with his seventy-seven rifle. But for him to use his grenades effectively, he had to be closer to Allen. This meant sacrificing ground to his enemy to use his most effective weapon.
Dan’s bursts of gunfire became more sporadic and he allowed Allen to gradually approach closer and closer to his position. He recalled the first time he tried this exercise with Allen and quickly realized that this wasn’t just a game of whack a mole against another agent. The shards gained their power and cast out the nations of centuries prior through the use of their enhanced agents. Agents in general were the most dangerous infantry-level threat for a reason.
“You’ve stepped up your marksmanship and combat instincts since the last time we did this,” Allen said through private comms. “Which begs the question, I wonder what your current game plan is by relenting on the pressure.”
Dan gritted his teeth at purposely allowing Allen to gain more ground towards the designated zone. This training exercise felt more like a mental game of chess between him and Allen. He was taking a gamble by putting his faith into these rifle grenades in stopping the more experienced agent dead in his tracks.
His HUD had been tracking the gradual decrease in distance between Allen and the designated zone.
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Allen Draco is now 137 meters away from the point.
Dan’s training partner was still much too far away to use his grenades. But just to throw a curveball at Allen, he aimed his rifle upward and fired one anyway just to see the power of the incendiary grenades with his own eyes. The grenade arced vaguely in Allen’s direction and Dan already knew from the downward trajectory that the grenade wouldn’t reach Allen.
The grenade impacted the ground and a brilliant white explosion engulfed the entire arena in a flash. Past the initial explosion, the grenade left a sizeable blanket of blue flames in the impact area. Little embers sparked outwards as Dan continued watching the oddly beautiful destructive power of the incendiary grenade.
Dan loaded his launcher with a new grenade and knew he only had two more of them to use. He didn’t have enough to simply create a wall of fire to block Allen nor was it practical given the lack of wildlife or other flammable material within the arena. But he had something in store for Allen once he got into his desired range.
“Playing with guns I see,” Allen chimed in.
“Yeah, we’ll call it that,” Dan replied, giving his opponent a vague answer.
As Allen moved from cover to cover and Dan periodically fired bursts of gunfire to slow down the agent’s advance, he glanced down at the where his ultimate winning move would take place.
Just before the designated zone, it was an open space. Dan knew where he would fire his two incendiary grenades. He would fire one directly in front of the designated zone to prevent Allen from simply rushing the point and taking the win. This would force Allen to halt and take cover around the blocks closer to Dan’s position on the lookout tower. Dan would reload and fire his last grenade into the blocks.
Best case scenario, the last grenade will eliminate Allen and grant Dan the win. Otherwise, the grenade would force Allen out from the blocks and Dan will use this to put a few bursts into his opponent. Allen would be mildly irritated as his armor would have to survive either the incendiary grenade or the bursts of the ZK-77’s armor piercing rounds.
Predictably, Allen broke cover and made a full sprint straight toward the designated point. Dan fired a grenade directly in front of the point and set the area ablaze with a bright white flash followed by blue flames that engulfed the space in front of the point. As per Dan’s predictions, Allen abruptly stopped himself and was forced to back off.
While Dan was expecting Allen to retreat back to the set of blocks to the lookout’s left, Allen decided to flip the entire chess board by doing something Dan didn’t account for.
The agent leapt up and chose to directly confront Dan.
With his finger on the trigger, Dan had to hold back his laughter. While this was a bold move, Allen jumped directly towards him and Dan could easily just shoot him. His finger was ready to pull the trigger when something stopped him.
No matter how hard he tried, his finger simply would not move. Dan’s whole body was frozen as he briefly struggled to even move.
What the hell?
Dan felt a strange pressure against the back of his eyes and suddenly the entire room became a blurred mess of shapes and colors and his head exploded with sudden pain as if his brain began cooking within his own skull.
He could vaguely feel an impact across and him falling off the lookout. The pain from the impact onto the ground felt distant, as if Dan wasn’t experiencing the pain himself. By the time Dan woke up, Allen among a few Alpha staff members in white uniforms and red crosses had gathered around him.
“Sir, he’s awake,” one of them said.
Dan’s eyes ached, but whatever extreme pain he suffered from that strange headache was gone. He propped himself up with his elbows.
“Holy shit, are you alright kid?” Allen asked.
“I think so,” Dan said. “One moment I had you in my sights and was ready to pull the trigger and take the win.”
“What happened?” Dan looked down and noticed he was stripped of his armor and was down to his boxers.
“I froze up and got a massive headache. I have no idea where that came from,” Dan shrugged.
Allen exchanged looks with the rest of the medical staff.
“His body seems to have stabilized,” a female nurse said. “His heart rate and brainwave activity experienced strange spikes here and there in the past two hours but otherwise he’s fine.”
Dan looked at everyone and said, “I was out cold for that long?”
“Yeah,” Allen said. “They initially suspected you were suffering from a seizure and were hesitant to move you. In the past, imperfections with the early versions of the enhancement serums would cause bullshit like this for agents. Symptoms suffered by agents were far more amplified compared to normal people. Turns out, superhuman enhancements for people to become shard agents came with complications. I thought we had already worked out all the kinks by now but you never know. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Sitting on the cold metal floor, Dan thought about what had happened and never recalled any instance in the past when he just passed out out of nowhere. Not even before his days as an agent when he was breathing in polluted air all the time as a kid.
“Well kid, I think Jane has pushed you to your breaking point,” Allen said. “I updated her on what happened to you and we both agreed you’re taking the rest of the day off. Considering I had to try to prevent you from fragging my ass, I’d say you did pretty good this time, all things considered.”
Dan gave Allen a weak smile beneath his mask and replied with, “Thanks. I finally get to take a long nap at last.