“C’mon motherfucker, show yourself,” Zandith growled as he stared down the sniper scope. The view from the top of the highest building was nice. The cityscape was quiet. He had killed all the others. There was only one left, but he was good. He was keeping Zandith on his toes. Not many people could do that.
The infrared scanner didn’t pick up anything. He was probably using an infrared cloaking device. All Zandith had to do was wait until it ran out of power. He also hadn’t heard any shots whizz past him in quite a while. The other guy must have run out of ammo. Zandith had twenty rounds left, then he would have to go loot the other bodies for more.
He stood up and went to the opposite edge of the roof. A couple pillars of smoke rose from the streets where there had been shootouts. He scanned the streets for a couple minutes until he heard something peculiar above the whistling wind. It was a consistent, repetitive stepping sound that was slowly getting louder.
He followed the sound to its source and was shocked to find his opponent wall-jumping his way up the outside of the building. For a moment, he was stunned by his skill. The walls protruding from the side of the building were only an arm’s length wide. One slip-up and it was certain death.
Zandith snapped out of it and swung his rifle over the edge. His opponent raised his arm just in time for a shield to materialize out of nowhere. The bullets glanced off the shield, and his back-and-forth ascent had hardly slowed. His opponent managed to reach the top of the building. With his final jump, he backflipped over Zandith, the shield placed perfectly between the two combatants.
The man landed and rolled. He stood with his back to Zandith. His shield retracted back into his arm. Zandith wasted no time. He aimed and pulled the trigger. The rifle clicked. His opponent looked back at him and smiled.
Zandith dropped the rifle and ripped his daggers from their sheaths. He flipped them in his hands. “At last, we have a real fight.”
It was Zandith’s two daggers to his opponent’s one. They circled each other for a few seconds, then they rushed at each other. The swings were aggressive and the misses near. Zandith considered throwing one, but deemed it too risky. His opponent had too much armor, and he was too good at dodging.
He had managed to push him back to a corner of the roof when his opponent’s movements became jerky and sudden. Then he froze completely. Zandith threw a death strike at his chest but it passed right through it.
“Oh, come on!” He stood back and shouted at the sky. “Of all the times to lag out, it has to be now? Dammit, I was so close to just…” He scowled as he moved the blade in and out of his opponent’s intangible chest.
Seconds later, his opponent vanished. Zandith whirled around and crouched into a fighting stance, except something wasn’t right. The other man had three daggers, and Zandith’s fingers were curled around nothing. He stalked slowly towards Zandith.
“Wait, wait!” Zandith cried, raising his hands. “You saw that lag. That’s not fair.”
The man, who looked to be about forty, spoke with the voice of a teenager. “Says who?”
All Zandith saw was a metal blur in front of his face, then giant “Game Over” text congratulating him for taking second place out of the 100-player free-for-all.
“God dammit!” He roared as he yanked his headset off his head and slammed it to the ground. The visor cracked and lost power. He shouted at the headset, hoping the mic still worked. “BigBoi69, I will find you and kick the shit out of you!”
He picked the visor back up, disappointed, and tossed it to the pile of broken visors. He stormed out of the simulation room and hollered down the hallway. “Hey, Three! What just happened, man? I thought we had good internet!”
The reply came from a disinterested voice. “There is currently a storm at the surface. The trees are probably interfering with the antennae.”
Zandith sighed and moped over to the kitchen area. Just before he dug into a carton of hemberries, a black woman wearing a medical coat wandered in. “Sir, Specter Six has returned.”
He ate a hemberry before he responded. “Does he have anyone following him?”
“No, the diversion illusion was executed successfully.”
“How deep is he? I can hardly feel the connection.”
“He is in the early stages of level 3 trance. In a couple hours he will have reverted to late level 2.”
“Okay, let him in.”
They migrated to a room containing several medical pods. Dennis was already standing next to his, awaiting the next orders. His cap and jacket were wet from the rain outside. The woman used her modified wrist pad to scan him several times from head to toe while walking around him.
“What does he need, One?” Zandith asked, staring into Dennis’ eyes. They were halfway out of focus. Such was the nature of the trances he induced.
“A standard nutrient IV should suffice. He is slightly sleep deprived as well, so I recommend putting him under for ten to twelve hours. The entrancement session will occur while in deep sleep.”
He nodded. “Specter Six, normally I would ask for a report, but seeing as I had to intervene in the mission, I already know what happened. You need to learn how to act without causing suspicion. I know I just recruited you last week, but you need to do better. Otherwise, I will have to find another Specter Six.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Dennis blinked slowly. “Understood, sir.”
“Good,” Zandith said, motioning to the horizontal pod. “Get in.”
Dennis obeyed. The top cover slid over the entire pod and locked itself in place while One configured it for the maintenance procedure. Zandith stared at the closed pod, trying to repress the envy he felt for the guy inside. Oh, to be normal. It would be a subtle yet convenient luxury, one that he was denied in almost every way. “One, have you made any progress on researching the previous Specter Seven?”
“Very little,” she said as she continued to configure the pod. “His breakthrough was very anomalous and unpredicted. Just hours before, he was in mid-level 3 trance. It should have been impossible to jump all the way to early level 1.”
He sat on a nearby pod and slouched over in thought. “Do you have any theories as to what caused it?”
“None that make sense. Since you choose people who have no training in the Blue, it should be impossible for them to break out of the amplified mindscape without your permission.”
“Do you have any theories that don’t make sense?”
“Yes, spontaneous learning.”
Zandith chuckled. “Yep, doesn’t make any sense to me. But still, what are the symptoms of a breakthrough like that of the previous Seven?”
One turned to him having finished the configuration and initiated the procedure. “There were only two symptoms that could be detected externally. One, sudden refusal to obey commands, and two, excessive crying. After the crying, he was merely acting like he was still entranced, but you caught onto that pretty quick.”
Zandith shook his head. He had seen the crying scientist himself. It was so intense, but he had thought it was just a side effect of prolonged level 3 entrancement. Maybe he was just too old and the entrancement sessions didn’t work on his old brain. Specter One had gotten it down to a science, and she had discovered a way to safely keep the brain of the subject in a trance state indefinitely. Perhaps it wasn’t so indefinite after all.
“Keep at it,” Zandith said, standing. “I want his breakthrough to be your primary study when you are not dealing with your other priorities.”
“Yes, sir.”
He started on his way back to the kitchen, but stopped before he left the room. He turned back to One. “What is your status, by the way?”
“My status is similar to that of Specter Six. I am sleep-deprived, which if not corrected within the next few days, risks breaking my trance.”
“Okay, put yourself through the same procedure as Six. Now is not the time to be losing you. You are my most valuable asset.”
She didn’t respond to the compliment, which was the usual. He returned to the kitchen to continue his meal of hemberries topped with hemberries with a side of hemberries.
He checked the status of Specter Four. The latest update was an hour ago. Brandon wasn’t doing anything suspicious in prison, and Evan was still in the hospital recovering from the attack. Hector was a bit of a nuisance. He was half good cop and half bad cop, always going to the law first, then to Domrik second.
Zandith had tried to use Four to spy on Domrik, but weird things always happened when he tried that. Glitches in communication happened. One time, Four’s power armor stopped working even though the crystals weren’t depleted. The final straw was when Four stopped obeying commands for a couple minutes. His trance level hadn’t changed, but he had stopped following Domrik for seemingly no reason. When Zandith had interrogated him, he had said he didn’t remember stopping.
He told Four to focus more on Hector’s whereabouts. That was the closest he was willing to get to Domrik. He knew Domrik visited Evan to ask him questions, but it was too risky to have Four enter the same building as Domrik. That’s why he had to resort to using the earrings he gave to Eleanor, though they weren’t very reliable since they lost reception quite often. Good thing she didn’t know that. At least the lie about having assassins around her house seemed to work on her.
Four replied, acknowledging the order.
After finishing his dinner, Zandith took a short walk to Three’s chamber. Dozens of computer screens covered a wall. A lanky man with computer glasses sat at the terminal in the middle of the room. The terminal wasn’t powered on, however, because he was using a traditional keyboard with backlights.
“Evening Three, what’s the status?”
Three’s eyes kept scanning the monitors as he spoke. “Of me, or the place?”
“The place.”
“Give me a moment,” he said as his fingers clattered the keyboard. Zandith wanted to plug his ears. The clacking sound of the keys was obnoxious when it reverberated throughout the cave system. He put a fist to his forehead. “You know the terminal would make things much easier.”
Three stopped typing and looked slowly at Zandith. “This is my keyboard.”
Zandith cursed himself for picking this guy, though he reminded himself that he was the best hacker he could find. He was also close to having One examine him. Three would obey all commands except for “use something other than your keyboard.” Even in a level 5 trance, he treated the keyboard like it was another body part. When Zandith had first recruited him to the Specter Guild, he had refused to do any work until Zandith got his keyboard from his hideout.
“We haven’t had any attempted breaches in the past week,” Three said. “You have another two weeks’ worth of crystals before you need to restock.”
“I assume you have found our next target for that?”
“Yes, Dranmack Industries will be having a major crystal shipment next week. Their trip will take them across the valley to Ridgemire. There should be plenty of time to execute the heist.”
“What’s the time span?” Zandith asked, trying to find the monitor Three was looking at.
“You have a four-hour window with minimal security in the area. That’s when they cross the plains. Six hours if you want to include the drive into more urban areas.”
“How many will we have to kill?”
“There will be five trucks this time, so at least five.”
“Fuck, is there another way to get them to stop without them remembering anything?”
“Tranquilizers.”
Zandith rolled his eyes. “Yes, of course, sleep. I wonder why I always forget about that. Schedule a safe time for me to go to the hunting store.”
“Will do. I should also warn you, sir, that the authorities will likely catch onto the pattern of attacks. After this one, subsequent ones will require much more stealth.”
Zandith raised his eyebrows. “More stealth than an invisibility illusion?”
“If you want to be absolutely sure that both you and Four don’t end up captured or dead, yes. Your attack on Brandon Norallis’ son made headlines, and while the security footage is still top secret, the details have been released. You may be an expert illusionist, but that doesn’t stop others from fighting back.”
Zandith folded his arms and bit his lip. He knew this was bound to happen eventually, so he wasn’t surprised. “See if you can find another source of refined crystals. We can’t afford to not meet the energy requirements, but we can afford time.”
“I will get back to you on that. The research required is substantial and difficult considering I am a one-man team.”
“I know, but you have done fine so far.” Zandith looked at him and slapped him on the shoulder. “Keep it up.”
“Yes sir,” Three said with a hint of a smile.