The doorway and dozens of stray bullet marks are behind the SEAL team. The steel door looks ripped from its hinges, crumpled like a discarded baking tray, as if someone kicked it down and it continued sliding before a full stop. The gibs and meat of soldiers are strewn in roughly concentric circles centered around the doorway, but I gotta give the SEALs credit, their vitals show they’re all used to it.

Their helmet cams examine the remains. None of the bodies are cyborg, which makes things really easy to understand for everyone. This leads to the most incredible idle conversation I’ve ever heard between soldiers until now.

“Damn, look at those armor plates. These guys are using next-gen stuff, huh? Taking 5-56 head-on and just leaving a scratch. A bit of spit, it’ll be good as new.”

“Next-gen my ass. Look, it’s sliced through clean like some guy with the power of God and Anime decided he’d drop out of engineering today.”

“…Hey, man, we don’t bring that up here.”

“Then think fast. Look over here. It’s clean like butter up until two inches from the edge.”

“Oh, yeah, striations along the cut. If it’s power of God and Anime, and there’s a sword involved, then edge alignment would’ve started screwing up at that point…wait, why are you pointing that out—”

“Calculate how fast a 2.6-lb katana would be coming at this poor guy given how fucked up he got.”

“Motherfucker—”

“Next round’s on me if you get it.”

“Damn it, fine. If it stops a 5-56 that easy, it’s kinda like two AR500 plates on top of each other, so…ah, fuck it, probably a 50 BMG would still go through that, so…10,000 foot-pounds? So the sword’s going, what”—he pulls out a scientific calculator, punching a few numbers—“88 feet per second?”

“And that’s…”

“Around 60 miles per hour.”

“Isn’t a brick a couple of pounds? Someone getting bricked from a car running at highway speeds is the same as getting vaporized by a 50 BMG?”

“Sword’s probably a bit faster, but hey, power of God and Anime, right?”

I’m honestly amazed about how close their answer is to one of my calculations. Yes, just one of them, because obviously I have to look into several thousand possibilities.

The same pair of SEALs call the combat engineers to come up with something that can stop a 50 BMG, and after an hour, they end up with a shield made of five layers of AR500 steel plates. By my calculations, such a shield will just barely survive about 80% of the time, but that’s an impressive rate considering how literally slapped-together everything is.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“We’re going in,” the SEALs radio in.

While that particular team steps over the massacre and enters a lair of the unknown, another team enters the second door on the other branch of the tunnels. Their night vision shows something like a generator room.

Ten steps in, the place lights up, overwhelming their NVGs. Helmet feeds start shutting off or falling down.

“We’re taking fire!” the radios blare. “Man down!” “Take cover!”

As far as I can tell from the helmet feeds, the SEALs and the enemy are inflicting casualties in equal numbers, and in the same manner: headshots.

“Detected foreign RF—hacking into enemy systems!” Cykamee says. “Found! Interfering aim assist programs!”

Immediately, the SEALs gain the upper hand. Enemy fire scatters in various directions, while the SEALs’ aim zeroes in for headshots.

“Hold fire!” a voice from the other side shouts. “Surrender! We surrender!”

The white flag waves—though, everything’s green in night vision. The enemy—the Winter soldiers start filing out with weapons in the air, and the SEALs start disarming them.

The two commanders meet, and the Winter captain surrenders his pistol to the other side. “We thought you were…them. No one had to die today. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“Former Marines?” the SEAL says.

“Yes, sir.”

“You get paid good here?”

“We…were.”

They look around. Their medics are tending to the wounded…and the dead.

“You know damn well what you’re in for when you get shipped out of here,” the SEAL says, “but for the love of God, tell me … What the hell’s going on here?”

***

At around the same time, the other team moves down a bleach-white hallway, illuminated with soft, white light. The weirdest thing is the splotches of black sand—thin footprints apparent—leading the way.

It’s actually a short corridor, but the SEALs are moving slowly. It’s not out of caution or anything, but it’s just that the shields are heavy as heck, so they’re doubly making sure that the shield-bearers won’t randomly dislocate their joints just from lugging the thing around a bit roughly.

Did I mention that the shields are so heavy, that the shield-bearers have to use both hands to lift them? Sure, they have shoulder slings so they could free a hand for a handgun, but if they need to move to protect a teammate, they’ll have to use both hands to lift the thing.

Considering the scary enemy they might face, they had some of the 50 BMGs carried into the tunnels, so now we have a full dungeon raid party consisting of tanks and DPSes. No healers, because there’s not really a point to it if you’re just gonna get one-shotted, and at least half of these guys could probably figure out a way to patch themselves up with leaves and duct tape.

“Heavy RF signals ahead,” Cykamee says. The B-team behind the dungeon raid party starts laying down even thicker Ethernet cables.

The next thing that happens is a cutscene if I’ve ever seen one. The SEALs emerge from the hallway and onto an observation deck with a one-way window. The room was lit up only by red emergency lighting. I mean, of course it’s an observation deck, because how else would they have spotted the edgy, shadowy, humanoid figure down below, surrounded by a killing floor of limbs and giblets. The blood’s only hidden by the fact that the entire floor is lit by the same red emergency lighting.

The figure is strangling some Winter guy, holding him up by one hand from behind. The other hand plunges into the guy’s nape. The guy spasms for a few seconds then goes limp.

When the figure releases the guy, he lands feet first. He looks panicked, and a gun is thrust into his hands. He hesitates, but he scampers away, anyway.

“That’s the RF source,” Cykamee says.

“Command…are we taking out that thing?” the SEAL lead asks.

Johnson looks disturbed. He pushes his feelings down before speaking again. “The primary objective is to locate the hostages and get them out. Avoid contact if possible.”

“Wilco.”

The figure disappears through a door on the far side of the room. The SEALs’ shoulders all visibly drop.

Honestly, I’m not sure if letting it go here was a good idea.