Rebecca twirled her smartphone around in her hands and stared at the abyss of the night sky through the little square window beside her seat. They had boarded the plane over an hour ago and were well on their way to Fuchu Air Base in Tokyo.
‘Are you always so tense?’ said Kelly, sitting across from Rebecca. ‘Relax. Have some peanuts.’ She slid the bowl of airplane snacks across the table between them.
‘The Syndicate will know by now that I was arrested, which means that Nexus Rogue knows too.’
Kelly leaned back and ate a peanut. ‘You’ll be safe as long as you stick with us.’
Rebecca decided that leaving Perth was easy. She had spent her entire life there, on the glowing streets of an isolated city, but there was nothing holding her back anymore. They had stopped at her apartment before heading to the airport so she could pack some things; her clothes, her laptop. When Kelly wasn’t looking Bec had gone into her office and collected a photograph from her desk. In the photo, she was with her old high school friends, the four of them standing in front of a computer rig where they had built their own VR game. Jackie was like a sister, she was the pretty one but Rebecca was never jealous. Liam was about as hot-headed as they came, always stirring up trouble but usually with the help of Bec and the others. Mika was the smart one, quiet but methodical and usually the one getting them out of trouble or covering up their shenanigans.
Kelly knew about the photo, afterward, of course. She’d had Bec’s luggage checked before boarding the plane. As she sat there now watching Rebecca in the seat across from her, she wondered where those old friends were, but she decided not to bring it up, not yet.
‘So, who are we working for, anyway?’ Bec asked. ‘You’re US military, right?’
‘Ex-special forces.’ Kelly leaned forward and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Our task force belongs to the Global Cyber Security Division. We’re a covert ops counter-terrorism team operating under the authority of the UN’s security department. This is a joint-forces operation. I’m sure you can understand that our enemies are scattered across the globe, operating almost entirely online.’
‘And that’s why I’m here,’ Rebecca said. ‘You need hackers to fight hackers.’
Kelly nodded. ‘Something like that.’
‘So, who do we take our orders from?’
‘All you need to know is that you take your orders from me. I want to make that perfectly clear. You’ve never worked in the field before. I have. When I tell you to do something you obey without question. Understood?’
The change in tone caught Rebecca off guard.
‘Loud and clear.’
They sat in silence then until the plane descended over the Tokyo skyline. Kelly leaned towards the window and pointed out a large block of land.
‘That’s Fuchu,’ she said. ‘We won’t have a lot of time to make sure you’re prepared for field missions. You better be ready to work for your freedom.’
Rebecca was never good at sport and she didn’t know a thing about martial arts or guns, other than what she learned in movies and video games. She used to suffer from insomnia and found that the best cure for long quiet nights was exercise. Therefore, she was already physically fit, and she was already one of the best hackers in the country – in Australia, anyway – and right now her freedom and her vengeance were on the line.
She was ready for this.
Given Rebecca’s unofficial history with disregarding authority she assumed that life at a military base would be worse than it actually turned out to be. She approached it with the mentality that she was making the best of a bad situation – either get the job done or go to prison. It was an easy decision to make.
For three months she lived alone in a secure apartment. Before dawn she awoke to the gruelling sound of Toshiro’s voice, announcing that her day had begun. Toshiro acted as her supervisor for the duration of her training at the base. If Bec had officially joined a military academy she would have been kicked out long ago. She discovered she had a messiness problem and Toshiro regularly scoffed at the state of her room. Her clothes were usually scattered on her floor and nothing in her dorm belonged anywhere, thus the massive pile of books, cups and food wrappers on her desk.
The instructors drilled her mercilessly in firearms, close combat training, agility courses and, obviously, computer skills. She endured through every bloody nose, every nasty scrape and ugly bruise. She brushed up on her Japanese just so she could yell back at her instructors – something that the GCSD team didn’t appreciate. These people were ruthless, they never stopped pushing, and eventually Bec had no choice but to fall in line.
‘It’s just another job,’ she reminded herself.
She decided to get rid of the undercut, shaved her head completely and stopped dying her hair so that it returned to its natural brown colour.
I’m in the army, now, she thought, might as well look the part.
They allowed Rebecca limited access to a personal computer and phone, but Toshiro kept her use of tech under strict surveillance being well aware that she could do far more damage with a laptop than a firearm. Good behaviour paid off, and after about a month Kelly Jade gave Rebecca clearance to work with the R&D department at the base. Tinkering was a lifelong hobby for Rebecca and she was damn good at it, good enough to teach the technicians there a thing or two.
As Rebecca worked on her devices with the resources provided by the military she caught herself one day with a smile on her face. For the first time since the bombing she forgot about Zef and Nexus Rogue. Then she checked herself and shook the sensation away. She had work to do.
Rebecca crouched low, her back against the wall. She slid her army cap on backwards to keep the hair out of her eyes, then flicked her tactical visor over her eye. The device activated automatically, the little pane of glass glowing in the dim light of the room. Bec took a deep breath and reloaded her sidearm – a Beretta 92FS.
She peeked over her cover and examined the training simulation room, a massive deep-blue expanse with a small area resembling a high-rise office building under assault by terrorists. Bec rarely ever had to exercise in VR before and the sensory data for heat, sweat and fatigue began to spin around in her head. The piercing ache of the cramp in her left side registered as painfully as it would in real life, if not more, and despite her training, Bec’s lack of physical fitness surprised her. She’d been running around this building for what felt like hours, although like many things in virtual reality time could sometimes feel warped.
The military possessed all kinds of training simulations, from deserts to snow storms, it was really quite impressive, Bec thought, an effective way to train soldiers for the psychological horrors of battle, to train them for blood, for isolation, fear, and death. Bec knew the dangers, of course. A soldier would spend enough time in a simulation and begin to forget what’s real. It happened quicker than most might think. Some would argue that VR wasn’t perfect, that the sensation of killing a man couldn’t be replicated, just like Vex believed that true passionate intimacy couldn’t be faked. Maybe sensations like love and death were too human for a program to understand. That didn’t change the fact that an unsuccessful VR sim could break a human mind in two—an overload of sensory data, maybe a glitch in the system or an imprint left on the mind that can’t be processed. Never in the history of war has the strength of a mind been so integral to survival.
She spotted a man in black tactical gear creeping towards her, aiming his AR down the sights.
In the beginning the simulations were a nightmare. Bec would tremble, hesitate, handle her firearm like a bar of wet soap.
Now, the enemy soldier checked a doorway to his left. Rebecca swung out and fired. Two in the chest, one in the head. The spurt of blood as the bullets tore through him and the way his body jolted and went limp was harrowingly lifelike. Bec lowered her weapon and her hands trembled for just a second.
‘She’s over here!’ another solider called from afar.
Rebecca rushed forward and took cover ahead of where the first soldier’s body lay. She stayed low and listened to their footsteps. The solider nearly walked past. She shot him once in the knee and twice in the chest, then darted around to another panel before the third soldier could find her. She stayed silent. Waiting. The beam of his flashlight cast sweeping shadows across the room. If he aimed at her directly the light would obstruct her vision. She continued sneaking around behind him. Then two in the back, one in the head.
But then Kelly jumped out from behind one of the panels and grabbed Rebecca’s gun, disarmed her and elbowed her in the chest. Rebecca stumbled backwards and Kelly shot her twice in the chest. The bullets ripped through her torso with the sensation of jolting electricity.
A message appeared on her visor: SIMULATION ENDED. The room began to deconstruct. Rebecca sat up and removed her Immersion device. Kelly waited in the other deck, her hair tied into a neat red bun.
‘What the hell,’ said Rebecca.
Kelly pointed at the panel that specified the VR difficulty setting.
‘You were playing it on easy.’
Bec crossed her arms. ‘I kept dying.’
‘Real soldiers won’t go easy on you.’
Rebecca opened her mouth to argue but said nothing, then looked at her hands.
‘It felt so real, I watched those soldiers die and I had to remind myself that…’ She sighed. ‘When it’s real, what if I can’t…?’
‘Taking a life is never easy. It’s not as simple as some game.’ Kelly moved to sit beside Rebecca and gestured towards the VR decks. ‘But sometimes you don’t get to decide.’
‘How many people have you killed?’
Kelly breathed a mocking laugh and glanced at the ceiling.
‘During our missions you can rely on the professionals to handle the dangerous stuff. Our roles will change based on mission specifications. You’ll be coming with us to each mission location but we’ll probably need you most when you’re away from the action. Still, you better learn to protect yourself.’
Something suddenly occurred to Bec.
‘You shot me with my own gun.’ She quickly looked at the R&D table. ‘Hey, I wanna show you something.’
Bec went to the R&D table and grabbed the 9mm pistol she’d been working on and a box of ammo.
‘Blanks,’ she said, even though live rounds were prohibited here.
She fed the clip into the gun, cocked the round into the chamber, aimed down sights and then set the gun aside.
‘So, I’ve been making some modifications to the weapons here.’
She opened her laptop and ran a DNA reader program then grabbed a device that had a small flat pad and asked Kelly to place her thumb on it. The device a mechanical clicking sound.
‘Ouch.’ Kelly lifted her thumb. A tiny droplet of blood. She sucked it away. ‘What was that?’
Rebecca’s computer began processing Kelly’s DNA and uploading it to the program.
‘Do you trust me?’ Bec said.
‘Not really.’
The upload finished. Good to go.
They each put their ear-plugs in and Rebecca handed Kelly a pair of safety glasses. She lifted the handgun again. It had special iron sights that glowed white when she aimed at the wall. She fired a blank shot, then aimed at Kelly and the colour of the iron sights switched to green. She tried to fire a shot. Click. Nothing happened.
‘Friendly fire tactical safety.’ Rebecca smiled, unloading the clip and releasing the round from the chamber. ‘The sight recognises your DNA and automatically switches to safety.’
Kelly examined the gun, approvingly.
‘I must admit, Rebecca, that’s impressive.’
‘So now I won’t have to worry about accidentally shooting you.’
‘I feel safer already.’
When Kelly left the room Rebecca returned to calibrating her new device. She failed to mention her surprise when the safety activated. There’s no way she’d try it with live rounds.
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