“A mech!” interrupted Jason. “I hear they hate my breed of agent; the newest batch.”
“You do out perform them in every way. You are nano augmented, they are mechanically augmented, big difference. I’m not surprised they’re bitter.” Replied Alex. “Second objective is to get to where the commander is, and interrogate him. Ask him why he risked an open assault on this building.”
“Okay. Thanks Alex. I’ll uh…keep in touch.” The infolink connection was severed.
Gunther traipsed back and forth in his cell. He couldn’t believe they’d captured him. And then HQ sent a nano agent to “rescue” him. He didn’t need to be rescued.
The guard at the door stared in through the glass, Gunther stared back. A lot had been going through Gunther’s mind in the cell, the way they were treating the mechs, for one. He was sure they didn’t care anymore. UNATCO, the anti-terrorist organization that Gunther worked for didn’t retire people, the people not needed anymore simply disappeared. Gunther was paranoid, and he was sure than he was headed for the junk pile. The arrival of the nano agents was permanently the topic of conversation in UNATCO HQ, and when Jason, the first and only nano agent as of yet came, they completely forgot about mechs. He went against UNATCO regulations when he involved himself in this situation by arriving unassigned, and that was another reason he thought UNATCO was planning his demise. Slowly, little by little, Gunther was turning against UNATCO.
Jason had no clue where he was, but that didn’t affect him, he knew exactly what do to, and as this thought passed through his mind, he spotted an office computer. Jason was already very experienced in computer skills, as part of the initial training he undertook. It took him no time to hack into the surveillance camera mainframe, and see the commander, pacing around in a guarded room on floor 15, he entered the nearest elevator with the 15th floor as his destination.
Over many years of human evolution, bridges had been gapped. Some rightfully so, other that shouldn’t have ever been attempted, let alone accomplished. Gunther was part of a living experiment, a human/machine, logic and reason combined with human emotion, metal flesh and gray skin. Yes, he was struggling with it, and yes, he was losing, and yes, his sanity had lost itself long ago. He’d realized that several times over, and he knew it. He tried to convince himself he was not a machine, he was a human. Not a metallic thing to be used like an appliance. But he was employed by a company that used him just for that. An appliance for killing. Human troopers were not enough. Killing machine troopers were what were needed. The pseudo-excuses and mechanics of it were an incredible thing. It could start with none other than the public school system, a device used for filtering, not for learning, and go from there, so that the country was made of “yes sir,” “no sir,” “I’ll follow those orders without thinking about them, sir.” Gunther had emotions, alright. But he was trying to bridge the wrong gaps. He was trying to reach ones made intentionally unreachable; and thus, he was using the wrong passions. And he could realize this as many times as he wanted, and say, “no, it’s all false, I’m not a machine.” But everybody around him didn’t care, and he was left on his own, in a paradox struggle, a vicious loop that got him nowhere, and only made his lack of sanity even worse every time he went through it.
And vicious cycles, regardless of their names, always end. More often in a very, very bad way than a good one. A vicious cycle would stretch itself so thin, that it would snap. Like a rubber band being pulled to its limits.
This is exactly what happened when Garrett, the trooper, the man with a wife and three children whom he loved, with dreams that he had accomplished, with things that he approved of and things that he did not, a man with his own beliefs and absolutely nothing that the world could possible hold against him, opened the cell, walked over to Gunther to ask, “Don’t worry, soon as we’re finished you can go straight home, we wont hurt you. ”
But Garrett would never get to finish that statement, because the moment he opened his mouth, Gunther Hermann’s vicious cycle finally came to a kicking, screaming, murdering end. Something in his head finally snapped, and before he knew what he was doing, he had trooper Garrett’s head pressed up against the window of his own cell, using only one metallic arm, clenching down on the man’s head like it were the world between his fingers.
The glass windows of UNATCO’s cells were made thick, so that escape through them was made impossible. So thick, in fact, that if you were to force a human body up against them, and press it with unimaginable pressure, the human body would be completely mutilated before the glass would ever sustain a single scratch.
And this is what happened as Alex Jacobson and Jock watched from inside his cell. Watched as Gunther Hermann pressed the body of Garrett up against the window. Watched as the trooper’s head exploded into a red mess, regardless of his helmet, completely soundless. Gunther dropped the crumpled body onto the floor.
Complete. Dead. Silence.
Jason threw an empty bullet shell at the left wall near to the commanders room, one of the guards went to investigate, he threw another the opposite wall, and as the other guard glanced sideways for a split second, Jason was in the door, unnoticed. He knew he could have killed them both, but for some reason, he didn’t.
The commander sat at a chair, facing the window, he couldn’t see Jason.
“Move an inch or say anything and the silenced pistol replies.” Said Jason. The commander sat still, and Jason moved around the other side of the chair. As he saw the commanders face, the man looked terrified. But just before Jason managed to say anything to the man, his infolink connected.
“Jason! Gunther has lost himself! He’s killing everyone there, even our own guards at the front of the building, your new objective is to locate and kill Agent Gunther Hermann.” Connection severed.
Jason swept from the room. Thoughts fleeted through his head. Irony, he’d put off killing anyone till now, but now it was his objective, to kill one of his own men. It didn’t make any sense. The government churns out drone after drone. Day after day. Order followers. Machines, devoid of all human emotion and opinion, made to serve the government to fight all wars, while the fat cat bureaucrats sit and gain power. He hated it. Every bit of it. But there was nothing he could do about it. And he knew he was one of those people. He hacked into the surveillance system again, and as soon as he discovered Gunther’s location, he homed in on it. He passed through one corridor after another. This is what he had to do. No questions asked, the guard at Gunther’s cell was killed for answering question. This is the life of the mercenary. Jason always thought, the people he worked for always ruled the world from backdoor. An invisible hand stretched over the world. This is what the world had succumbed to. He found Gunther. He was standing in the middle of a random corridor. Looking at himself in the mirror.
“You know your just the same as me. We’re all in this together you know.”
Jason knew this is where he was meant to pull the trigger. Where he cares for nothing Gunther has to say. Orders are order. But he listened.
“They use us, we have no relevance. They don’t care. As long as we keep the ammunition storage low. Bureaucracy, politics, mismanagement. They’ll do the same to you what you’ve been ordered to do to me one day. You know that.”
Jason gritted his teeth, and raised his gun.
“You know it. But you don’t care. You think you do, and you think about it all you want. But in the end you realize. We’re the same. This is what we’re trained for. I realized it, as will you…and you think your saving the world.” Gunther began to shout. “You know how long I worked in this organization? How much effort I put in? And in the end they can just bump you off. No matter how high you go Jason, the ladder just gets higher.”
Jason thought. Hard. He was so excited to get onto his first field mission. All he’d achieved was discovering mankind’s slow deterioration. The decent to destruction. As they evolved physically, the devolved emotionally. They had set his up perfectly, to be agent of the month, the best body dropper. The favorite. All he was, was a tool. A tool or government, and gun. And then… it happened. The thing that he thought about, dreaded about, happened. All the care left him, and the deep void of black replaced his heart. He drone was created, like all others before him. Like all the others after. He stopped caring. And remembered orders.
“Agent Hermann. I announce your retirement.”
Jason pulled the trigger.