Butcher headed to a cheap AirBnB he had booked nearby. Hotels were all very well, but he’d felt uncomfortably visible with cameras everywhere, and the simple anonymity of the AirBnB - especially when booked with BRS’s company credit card - was appealing.

A murderer on the lam would normally be the kind of thing guaranteed to get the journos salivating over their laptops, but someone with his background… The MOD would put some pressure on where it mattered to make sure it stayed quiet. But for all that Ball might be able to take his face off the wanted posters and even his fingerprints out of the files, there were still big, nasty men and women back in Hereford who knew exactly what he looked like and he didn’t need to be turning up on their radars any time soon. The longer Andy Evans could be forgotten, the safer Gary Parsons was going to be.

He sat in the kitchenette, clutching the coffee he’d made with the little sachet left by the owner. No milk, though, and Butcher felt his anger and frustration at that simple absence flare up as he smashed his fist down on the countertop next to the mug. For a moment he held himself on the edge. He could feel the mug leave his hand, scalding black coffee on his wrist as he hurled the whole thing with all his might into the sink as he howled his rage out, tears pouring down his face…

But that wasn’t what you did. He stared down at his hand, flat on the countertop next to the un-thrown mug, the steam rising off the black coffee. Anger, he reminded himself, was a choice. You only let it out when it mattered. When it made a difference. You didn’t do what he’d done for so long without learning to compartmentalize. The Det helped: people who understood, who were there with a pint and a hand on the shoulder. But he was cut off from that, now, and there was no one he could pour this out to over a quiet pint who had the experience and security clearance to sympathize. And he couldn’t blame Ball for that, could he?

Murder. Butcher was nothing if not honest with himself. With a good enough reason, he was more than capable. Perhaps he’d been paid. But what he could remember about Jon Arnold made him wonder if it had been personal. Righteous anger wasn’t his style, though. He suspected, now, that Arnold had been a people trafficker, moving children from Sudan to the criminal slave markets of north Africa and the Arabian peninsula. But Butcher didn’t have the sentimental fixation about kids that seemed to be so trendy, these days. He didn’t have any of his own, that he knew about. Sure, he would’ve tried to do the right thing, but hunting Arnold down and killing him? That just didn’t feel likely.

Now that he thought about it, and tried to remember what he had seen in those pictures, it seemed to him that they had looked like someone with their anger switched on: not the uncontrolled rage of a berserker, but the cold, hard, calculating fury of someone who had carefully built up a stockpile of fuel to make sure that their anger burned for as long as it needed to.

One inconvenience with going along with Ball’s plan, he now realized, was that he had never got his hands on a copy of the evidence. He had recognized himself in the footage but, now he thought about it, had that been just the power of suggestion? Maybe it hadn’t been him at all, just someone who looked like him, using his camera, with his callsign. This was the era of the deepfake, wasn’t it? Footage like that could be doctored.

Then he thought about the way the man on the screen had shot Victor Four One without even looking at him. Could he - Butcher - do that? He had shot plenty of people, working alongside the boys and girls from the Regiment. But was he really that good? Anger, used right, could turn a killer into a machine.

But these were dark pathways. There was no way to get his hands on that footage, yet. But eventually… No. This was unhelpful. Dwelling on things he couldn’t affect and which wouldn’t, actually, change his current circumstances even if he could was going to do him no good at all. He needed to think about something else. He subvocalized “set-tings” and looked at his stats so far:

STR

CON

DEX

INT

WIS

SPI

6

7

6

6

5

6

Athlete 1, Bluff 3, Endurance 1, Feat of Strength 1, Investigation 3, Martial Arts 1, Pain Resistance 1, Weapon Handling 2

Driving 1, Merchant 1

It felt like the nanoids weren’t doing much more than putting arbitrary numbers on stuff he’d already done and learned. And it felt like there were a thousand other things he could do that weren’t showing up because he’d had no reason to use those skills since he’d got the procedure. Where was “Instructor 4”? He was a bloody good teacher, with all the ticks in the box that a good soldier was expected to have. But there was no sign of that. And what about “Cook 2”? He’d been living off fast food and takeaways for the last week, but he could turn a mean lasagna when the moment called for it. Could even turn out a roast meal and plum pudding from scratch. No sign of that, though. The procedure of Cuttler’s was turning him into a cookie-cutter person.

And where was the enhancement it had promised him? He had three levels in Investigation, and Bluff, but didn’t feel like he was actually any better at those things than he had been before. But Emmy had been clearly stronger and faster than him - and stronger than she should have been, even for a gym bunny. Plus those stupid kung-pow moves of hers should’ve been a joke, but instead she was getting a speed and leverage out of her attacks that defied logic. He’d even felt it himself.

Of course, Emmy trained everyday at the gym. And she probably had her pick of sparring partners to finetune those skills and try out new stuff. She worked on making her skills better. And she’d had Cuttler there at the start, in person and on her side, to give her a few tips. Right now, though, he was cruising within his capabilities. He needed to push his skills a bit.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

It was still early evening. And if he was going to grab another takeaway, he needed to take things to the next level and earn that next heart attack, old school, nanoids or no nanoids.

When things got tough, and you had dark thoughts you needed to chase away, there was only one thing for a good soldier to do, he thought. But as getting completely and utterly wasted was probably a bad idea, right now, he supposed that he’d just have to go for a run instead… Butcher pulled his sports kit back on, locked the door behind him and hit the pavement.

He didn’t like running. In fact, it was fair to say that he hated running. He knew most others in his line of work loved it - getting out there and eating up the miles in a pair of old Nikes like you could just leave the world behind you. But something about having to do it had just robbed all the fun out of it for him, over the years. Now it was more like penance - the pain and discomfort you put yourself through to make sure you could still do all the fun stuff that made life worth living. But as he ran, this time, he had to admit that there was something liberating about the experience. The new trainers helped. New trainers always had a good bounce to them that his old ones just didn’t. But there was something different about it.

If CON 4-7 was normal, but he was CON 7, that meant he was at the limit of what counted as normal. And sure, he was a fit guy. Who wasn’t in his line of work? But what did CON 7 really feel like? And how did he push it up? He lifted his knees a bit and cranked up the pace as he slapped his way along the pavement, spotting signs for Camberley.

Damn, of course Frimley was practically in Camberley’s back pocket and if there was one place he could accidentally meet someone who knew him, outside Hereford, it was Camberley. He turned south and headed for the Deepcut training area. Swarming with squaddies, of course, Deepcut and Pirbright, but no one likely to know him from a kick in the balls - especially with his current look. And an early middle-aged man out for a run would turn no heads around here.

He hit a hill and with a grimace decided to give the nanoids a workout.

Come on, you bastards, he thought. Show me what you can do.

*

Athlete 2

Endurance 2

*

Athlete 3

Endurance 3

More fucking like it, thought Butcher as he extended his pace and headed back to the AirBnB. He had to admit, this was really something. He was sweating fit to burst, but every time he felt the burn building up in his muscles, it was as if some invisible coach was silently injecting him with something. The burn eased off, his lungs filled, the thumping of his pulse in his head drew back and it was like he’d just got out of bed after a perfect night’s sleep!

He could feel the nanoids doing their work in a way that was real and quantifiable. This wasn’t just an audit of what he could already do, any more. This was a serious upgrade!

Butcher felt excited for the first time in days. He would do everything! He’d find a paintball arena or airsoft team to run against, pushing up his weapon handling! He’d read every book he could get his hands on! He’d talk to everyone he met, to do whatever it took to build that WIS! It felt like months or even years of ennui were dropping off his shoulders and the possibilities that the procedure was opening up were breath-taking - in a way that just going for a long run was never going to be for him, ever again!

Hell, even if this all went wrong and he ended up back in prison, Ball couldn’t take the nanoids away from him, now!

Could he?

Butcher’s pace began to slow as he thought about this. The nanoids were programmable, which meant that presumably they could be programmed to simply head to his gut and dump out into a toilet bowl, or worse. Perhaps Ball could make them cut their way out of him, or choke his windpipe, or explode his brain.

But Cuttler was the only one who knew how to program them.

It was suddenly sounding like a less and less good idea to find Cuttler and take him back to BRS. But if he cut and run, he still had Ball’s tracker in his throat. And he still had a life sentence in maximum security waiting for him. There was a way out of this. He knew there was. He just needed to take his time, play the long game and work it out as he went along. And step one was finding Cuttler, one way or another.

Insight 1

Hm, he thought. It all seemed to be about the skills, now. The default stats seemed to have settled into place. But Cuttler’s tutorial had definitely said that stats could increase, as well as skills. Ten was superhuman, he’d said, but the scale went all the way up to 20? So how was he supposed to push up his stats? Maybe it was related to this class thing.

He unlocked the door and hit the shower. There was a kebab place just down the road, and he had a feeling that his stomach had an appointment with extra garlic sauce. He could even stop at the off-licence on the way back and grab some tins. It had been days since he’d last had a proper drink and that run had certainly built up a thirst. He needed to take the evening to think, anyway. The leads towards Cuttler had pretty much dried up and he thought Cally Cuttler was probably a long shot. But it was the only shot he still had.

Dressed again, he stepped out in the Hampshire darkness. It was spitting rain and a sharp wind was cutting down from the north east, forcing him to button his gabardine. As he passed the car he paused. Then, after weighing up the risks, he shrugged, unlocked it and moved the Browning from the glove compartment into his coat pocket. There was no need to let himself walk into trouble he couldn’t force his way out of now, just because things were calming down a bit.

The February streets were mostly empty and there was no queue at the kebab shop, so it was only a wait of minutes before, dinner in a cheap plastic bag, Butcher turned to head back to the AirBnB.

‘Mr Parsons?’

Butcher dropped the bag and turned, right hand flying to the pistol in his pocket, left hand shooting out towards the man who had spoken - no more than a silhouette in the dark. But as he reached to grab the target, suddenly the figure moved with a disturbingly liquid agility so that Butcher’s hand closed on nothing. But his target now stood in the streetlight, a thick duffle coat buttoned tightly over a scarf, hands stuffed into pockets against the cold, despite the speed with which he had just moved.

‘I hear you’re looking for me.’

There was no mistaking either the voice or the face. It was the same voice and face that had been haunting Butcher’s dreams since the day he had met Ball. It was Ronald Cuttler.

*

‘Occasionally, the nanoids will give you a choice,’ Cuttler’s avatar had told him, towards the end of the tutorial. ‘How you see the options will depend on how they decide to develop their neural interface with you. You might see them in dreams. You might experience a vivid hallucination while you’re awake. Or you might hear voices. Or you might just have a weird feeling that just compels you to consider options you never knew were available until that very instant. However it manifests for you, you should understand that what this means is that the nanoids have hit some sort of roadblock: a branch in their decision tree for which they are unequipped to decide on the next way to travel. Once you’ve told them, though, no backsies. So take these decisions carefully.’