Chapter 151. Special Command: Mission Impossible

One against thirty armed professionals trained specifically to kill. I had no access to S-Power, I was completely unarmed, and I was wearing nothing but a uniform shirt, without even a bulletproof vest. On top of that, I was on unfamiliar ground, and I knew the layout and blind spots only superficially. Judging by how coordinated their movements were, the enemy had apparently dug through the Corps archives and pulled every scrap of information they had on my psychological profile and physical limits.

What did I have going for me besides my fists? A set of keys to my bike and the barracks locks in my right pants pocket. A smartphone in my left. Not exactly enough to fend off a military operation. As for my awakened internal resources, I had several charges of [Special Command], [Tactical Mode], and one unused [Demoralization].

I admitted to myself, without any false optimism, that I had no idea how to win this fight, or even how to survive it. That was why I made the only logical decision available to me: I handed complete motor control of my body over to my subconscious. In hyperfocus, my brain functioned like a multithreaded supercomputer, producing solutions an order of magnitude cleaner, more precise, and more efficient than anything I could have managed by frantically trying to solve a critical problem through conscious reasoning. It was not that I, as a person, was useless. It was simply that a brain stripped completely of human emotion, fear, and unnecessary mental noise could process terabytes of incoming data in milliseconds. And right now, speed of thought was the only tactical advantage I had left.

The second [Tactical Mode] was still active, and I had already layered [Special Command] over it. For the first time in my life, I lost control not only of my body but of my mind as well. It was a completely new psychedelic experience, unlike anything I had ever felt before. Watching from the outside as my mental self raced across the entire P-EAR training grounds during those last moments of frozen time was strangely fascinating. It swept methodically through the area, scanning the air density and the texture of the grass inch by inch, then even plunged vertically underground. Beneath the concrete, my mental eye detected several concealed hydraulic mechanisms that were clearly capable of doing serious damage to me. The whole thing was a massive, high-speed data sweep. It reminded me of a deep system scan, when an antivirus program methodically probes every hidden directory and file on a hard drive to identify every possible threat before it can cause trouble.

My mental consciousness swept over every point within my available physical radius. Unfortunately, my current level was not enough to reach the interior of the three-story headquarters, much less scan it for hidden laser traps or a reserve cleanup squad. I had reached the limit of my scanning range.

[Tactical Mode] ended. My mental self snapped back into my body. I was trapped inside my own skull. I could not move even the tip of a finger on my own, yet I could see and register every movement my body made with perfect clarity, as if I were watching a big-budget first-person action movie. Normally, when I was in hyperfocus, everything blurred past in an instant, but unlike the dreary routine of training recruits or cooking late-night meals in the mess hall, I had no intention of missing this elite-level fight. I focused my mind and began recording every movement of my body frame by frame.

Time resumed its normal flow. The world around me exploded with sound, and everything suddenly started happening at insane speed.

My right heel came around with the full weight of my body behind it, hitting the shoulder joint of an invisible assault trooper with the force of a hydraulic press. There was a dry, unmistakable crack as the bone popped out of its socket. The soldier, packed into an advanced stealth suit, weighed at least two hundred pounds with all his gear, but pure physical power was surging through me now, the raw strength of a seasoned bull. His body let out a muffled cry as it was launched toward the bushes, shedding its camouflage as it flew.

The instant my right heel touched down after the spinning strike, my subconscious drove both legs into a powerful push. I shot straight into the air, soaring vertically over the asphalt path. .50-caliber sniper rounds with rubber projectiles screamed through the air just beneath my feet. At the same time, I snatched two flash-bang grenades out of the air, both launched from the assault team's underbarrel grenade launchers. Before I even began to descend, at the very apex of my jump, I twisted hard around my axis and whipped both still-unexploded grenades back toward the sniper nests on the roof.

An explosion. A blinding white flash seared my retinas for a fraction of a second.

My grenades never reached their intended targets. At the level of the third floor, they struck a translucent force field made of pure S-Power energy with a sharp metallic clang. The field formed a solid dome over the entire perimeter of the headquarters building. Right. An old, reliable tactic we had used while clearing the training Portal. Portable field generators deployed by the engineers. They opened the instant a sniper fired and slammed shut again while the weapon recharged. The cycle repeated over and over, leaving the shooters virtually untouchable while giving anyone attacking them a pathetic half-second window for a counterstrike.

Even so, my airborne attack worked perfectly. The S-Power shield could protect the snipers from physical projectiles, but it could not filter out light or sound. After the blinding flash and deafening blast of the flash-bangs, the snipers on the roof were effectively out of the fight for at least a minute. They were blinded, and for the moment, I did not have to worry about someone putting a dirty shot in my back.

But I had no time to celebrate. My main and only advantage in a fight without S-Power was my unmatched speed. The moment my feet touched the ground after the jump, they were already executing the next tactical pattern. I sprinted toward the fallen, groaning invisible soldier on the grass while holding my breath and squeezing my eyes shut. I had dealt with the flash-bang threat, but not the CS tear-gas grenades the assault troops had launched. Thick, suffocating gray smoke was already pouring from the metal cylinders scattered across the asphalt, rapidly filling the air around me with poison.

Running blind through a dense cloud of toxic gas might have looked like sheer madness to an ordinary person, but not to my accelerated mind. During that high-speed scan, my subconscious had built a detailed operational map in memory, down to the last inch of the training grounds. I did not need my eyes. With them closed, I calculated every step to the millimeter and slid precisely toward the fighter who was rasping on the grass after my devastating spinning strike.

As I closed in on him, my body acted on pure reflex. A short, vicious jab of my fingers into the vulnerable joint in the titanium armor at the base of his neck instantly shut down the trooper’s nerve center, sending him into a deep, painless blackout. At the same time, my fingers moved with the speed and precision of mechanical spiders, popping the latches on his helmet. In one fluid motion, I grabbed his military gas mask and pulled it over my face, sealing it tight.

The entire takedown and gear swap took exactly five seconds. My eyes had barely been affected by the caustic CS gas. Only a single burning tear had gathered in the corner of my left eye, and I blinked it away immediately, restoring my vision to full focus. Still, it was too early to celebrate. The thick composite lenses of the captured gas mask severely narrowed my peripheral vision, which meant the visual data reaching my brain for tactical analysis would now come in more slowly. On the other hand, my arsenal had just gained an excellent, ergonomically designed carbon-fiber baton. It would have been tactically sound to strip the fallen trooper of his camouflage modules and light body armor as well, but I had run out of time. Besides, my memory contained no specifications or activation codes for these futuristic stealth technologies.

The assault troopers in heavy S-Armor exoskeletons had already spotted my brazen maneuver through their thermal imaging and charged as one. The electric actuators in their armor hummed, multiplying the force behind every strike, while their S-Power fields made them completely impervious to direct physical attacks. All I had was a polymer baton and the processing power of a cybernetic brain.

I sharply twisted my body aside, creating distance and dodging a heavy rubber round headed straight for my chest. Instead of standard weapons, Leon’s assault teams used customized suppression gear that fired rubber ammunition. That confirmed my assessment once again: Colonel Stewart had never intended to kill me. He simply wanted to teach an overconfident rookie a hard lesson, or whatever name his warped veteran’s mind had given this sadistic little performance.

My eyes worked like high-frequency scanners, tracking every minute movement of the shooters’ fingers on their triggers. That let me calculate exactly who would fire and in which fraction of a second, before they even pulled the trigger. The assault troopers moved carefully, maintaining a tight formation so they would not accidentally hit their wounded comrade on the grass with a ricochet.

I dodged half the incoming rounds with nothing but body movement and knocked the rest aside with precise, glancing strikes of the baton. The captured weapon was superbly made. The polymer withstood three direct hits without developing so much as a crack. With every exchange, my body methodically took another measured step backward, drawing the assault team deeper into the cloud. Was I afraid? Not a chance. I was operating like a biological machine, completely untouched by hormonal surges. Was I counting on the tear gas damaging their lungs? Not that either. The operatives were sealed inside helmets with closed-loop filtration systems. I was simply luring them along a trajectory I had calculated in advance.

“Ah, shit! Damn it!” one of the assault troopers on the left flank roared as he went down face-first in the dirt.

His heavy boot had landed directly on a hyper-viscous adhesive trap hidden beneath the grass, which bonded his foot to the ground at the molecular level. Momentum carried him forward, and, fortunately for me, he landed with the full weight of his exoskeleton on his own assault rifle, crushing it with a sickening crunch. One rifle down.

That was the end of my easy tactical victories. Realizing they had walked into an ambush, the operatives instantly reorganized. They closed ranks around their fallen comrade, formed a tight all-around defensive position, and opened fire on me. They would not take another blind step across the grass, but I did not need them to.

Behind me, at the level of the headquarters’ third floor, came a barely audible dry click. The snipers’ protective dome had switched off for a moment, opening another firing window. I pivoted and hurled the carbon-fiber baton with every ounce of muscular force I could put behind the throw, sending it straight into the exposed housing of the portable generator. A brief flash, an electrical short, a strangled curse from the operator, and the S-Power field over the roof went out for good. I had spotted this design flaw in the generators’ power circuit back when we cleared my first training Portal.

With rubber rounds whistling past me, I kept my momentum and sprinted straight for the building. I planted a foot against the concrete foundation and launched myself upward, pushing my tendons to their absolute limit and clearing the distance to the third floor in a single leap.

I caught the first sniper’s wild, primal look of shock just before I ripped the heavy rifle from his hands and dropped him with a short buttstroke to the jaw. Two more shooters and a targeting-system operator shouting into his radio followed him into unconsciousness within the next two seconds. The position was completely cleared.

The S-Armor troopers below reacted instantly and surged onto the roof, but I was already waiting for them, gripping a captured sniper rifle in each hand. I flipped both safeties to automatic fire at the same time, and a dense hail of rounds poured into their shields, sending the exoskeleton regulators into frantic red discharge warnings.

Running along the parapet, firing continuously with both hands, snatching fresh magazines from the gear rigs of the snipers I had dropped, and methodically hammering round after round into the assault armor on the move. This was what I called a real war. For one brief, glorious moment, I felt like goddamn Rambo, with every inch of the training grounds under my control.

And that was the exact moment I lost.

I did not even have time to register or understand what had happened. One moment I was fighting the perfect battle, crushing an enemy force that outnumbered me, and the next, my entire body was completely paralyzed. It felt as if I were a puppet whose merciless puppeteer had severed every string in a single stroke. I could not move a single joint, could not draw a breath, and could not even physically blink.

My cybernetic brain detected a critical failure in my nervous system and urgently activated [Tactical Mode], attempting to freeze time and isolate the cause of the sudden paralysis. It was completely useless. At that moment, my mind felt like the screen of an old computer, with hundreds of kernel errors flashing across it one after another in a cascading flood. The firmware had locked up.

My [Tactical Mode] charges were completely depleted, and I remained helpless and motionless on the cold roofing felt, staring up at the gray Washington sky. Once they realized the arrogant rookie no longer posed any threat, the assault troopers in battered S-Armor slowly emerged from cover. They approached me from behind, and the heavy, painful jolts from powerful military stun guns began biting methodically into my shoulder blades. The last thing I saw was Leon grinning as his fist came flying toward my face. My consciousness finally went dark, plunging me into absolute blackness.

[Execution of Special Command forcibly terminated. Objective impossible.]