Chapter 7 - Back Into The Fight

Discarded Metal

Chapter 7 - Back Into The Fight

"Never back down" 

Since he left Meditech's research center, Mark (Martin) didn't experience any time distortions, things seem to have fallen into place. 

The training protocol he follows everyday keeps him grounded. 

In the morning he trains with the netrunning team, he is still trying to own the basic skills, he still has a hard time using the synthetic part of his brain. 

His netrunning skills are barely below average and that makes him question the effectiveness of his prototype brain. 

Could Meditech have screwed that one? 

The afternoon he is at the shooting range, his handgun aiming is flawless thanks to his visual implants. 

The connection between his targeting system and the synthetic brain is perfect, it feels like a part of him now. 

It almost feels like this type of vision is natural for him. 

"Maybe that's what I am, a killing machine… Not a stupid computer interface…" He thinks to himself. 

"I will take it." captain Haaris says as he enters the shooting range. 

"I don't need netrunners, with a handful of soldiers, I get the job done." he continues. 

Mark secures the gun he was using and turns to face the captain. 

"I feel trapped, captain." Mark says openly. 

"Explain, son." the captain commands. 

"Everything that I own are my combat skills, and now I'm pushed to become something that I don't understand at all." He says while looking down. 

The captain stays silent, measuring the weights of Mark's words. 

"You know I can still use you as a soldier, Meditech doesn't have to know." Haaris says. 

The captain's words give him a bit of hope, afterall he follows the captain's orders. 

"Just make sure you are ready, you will be back on the field sooner than you think." the captain says with a small punch on Mark's shoulder. 

Mark kept repeating the captain's words in his mind, all he wanted was to be back on the field. 

His entire soul was calling for action. 

One day, he finally received the call from Haaris. 

"This is it, son, you are back in the field, to the briefing room, right now." the captain says through Mark's Neural implants. 

Mark accelerated his pace and finally reached the briefing room. The usual holographic screen displaying information about the mission. 

The old familiar feeling was hitting Mark again, excitement. 

"We have a situation in the commons, a government convoy has been stopped by a terrorist group. They managed to take the convoy on a detour and they pinned it down in the middle of some warehouse area. We can't get any air support and from what we know there are no survivors. Our mission is to secure the convoy before their netrunner can crack into the convoy security and get the loot. Get equipped and let's go!" captain Haaris shouts. 

The whole group actively runs to the lockers' area and gets equipped with the standard assault gear. 

They quickly fill the reinforced SUVs waiting in the garage area. As soon as everybody is in, the garage doors open and the vehicles drive out. 

They speed through the streets of the corporate districts with sirens on, the regular cars giving them space. 

They pass the guarded gates that separates the corporate districts and the commons. The guards quickly open the gates, aware that there is an emergency. 

The vehicles speed through the streets of the commons. The pedestrians are barely paying attention, cop's cars, blaring sirens, all are common things in this area. 

They arrive at the warehouse area and the SUVs stop. A few police cars are guarding the front doors of a warehouse. 

Captain Haaris leads his men out of the SUVs. 

"What's the situation?" He asks an officer. 

"They got trapped in there, this is their only exit, they got the two trucks inside the warehouse, we don't know where we can get in, they have the front door locked and they have heavy firepower." the officer says. 

Haaris nods and starts looking around. 

The warehouse is a big block with only one big roll-up door, there are several cable lines connecting it to other warehouses. 

The warehouse itself is like a small fortress. 

Haaris calls Mark to come closer. 

"Son, I know you are better with guns but right now I need you to find a way to get me this door open." Haaris commands. 

Mark nods. 

He hates it, but at least he is back on the field. 

He switches his vision through different channels and quickly notices that the cables are actually active and they run through several other warehouses. 

"Captain! I think I can get the door open but I need someone to cover my ass." he says. 

Haaris nods. 

"Sparrow, cover his ass!" He says. 

Mark starts to move, followed closely by Sparrow. They keep low, moving alongside the walls of adjacent warehouses. 

As they get closer to a warehouse, Mark notices a car parked on the side of it. 

"It must be a good spot." he whispers to Sparrow. 

They both move slowly along the wall until they arrive at the front of the warehouse. Two goons are guarding a small door where the car is parked. 

Mark takes position against the wall and switches his vision spectrum. 

"Two at the entrance, three inside… One seems to be plugged in… That's all I see…" He whispers. 

Sparrow takes a peek around the wall corner, noticing the two guards. 

"You stay here, I will flank them, secure commlink on." he says.

He moves all the way back against the wall and disappears from Mark's vision. 

Mark follows him through infrared vision, he sees him moving slowly alongside the walls until he reaches the opposite side. 

Sparrow moves slowly along the wall, he is very close to the two guards. 

In one swift movement he takes down the first guard with his knife, plunging it in his throat. 

The second guard barely has time to understand as Mark takes him down with a headshot, using his handgun with silencer. 

As the second guard falls on the ground, Sparrow grabs his clothes to cover the noise of the fall, releasing him slowly on the ground. 

Mark quickly moves alongside the wall and takes position on one side of the door as Sparrow takes the other side. 

He quickly checks through the wall with his infrared vision, the three guys inside haven't moved. 

"We have the element of surprise, I will tag them to take them down." he whispers to Sparrow. 

Sparrow nods. 

Mark uses his Neural interface to set a targeting priority, the connected runner goes last, priority on the two others. 

He shares the targeting priority with Sparrow and starts a countdown with his fingers. 

3… 2… 1…

They kick the door open and in the same movement they both take shots to their targets. 

Both targets fall on the ground. 

The warehouse inside is very bare, there's a machine on the ground near the wall, the runner is connected to it and completely unaware of what happened. 

They advance slowly in his direction with their guns aimed at him. 

Sparrow grabs the cables that connect him with the machine and pulls. 

"What the…?" He barely has the time to say with Mark's gun's barrel on his nose. 

"Shhh." Mark says. "Who are you working for?" He asks. 

"Go to hell, cop!" He says as his eyes start to convulse and his head fries up. 

"No answers from him, fanatic…" Mark says. 

He moves the body away from the chair he was sitting on and takes the seat. 

"Damn it, I have to dive in… Cover me." he says to Sparrow. 

Sparrow nods. 

Mark pulls a cable from behind his ear and connects to the machine. 

The machine is a computer that connects to the network of warehouses. The netrunner was keeping it secure so nobody could open the door of the other warehouse. 

"Here comes nothing…" he says as he dives in. 

His surroundings instantly change, a virtual representation of the node he is connected to appears, with links to several other warehouses nodes. 

"I got this…" He says trying to encourage himself. 

He deploys a firewall to protect his node and starts looking at the connections to the other warehouses. 

He identifies the main warehouse and notices that the door is controlled by two nodes, one is his node and another one is inside another warehouse with a runner connected to it. 

The runner notices Mark's infiltration and launches a search program to get him. 

"OK… I'm not that subtle…" he says as he starts to deploy several firewalls. 

He manages to trap the search program between walls. 

"It's not that hard… I think I really got this…" His confidence grows with his small victory. 

He launches one of the daemons made by the netrunners group of CTIG. 

The daemon is spreading through the network and starts to attack the other netrunner, keeping him busy. 

In the meantime, Mark gets closer to his node and starts to deploy more firewalls. 

"I need to take over his node… Can I really do that…" He thinks out loud. 

Suddenly he feels a surge of power building up in his head and freezes for a moment. 

The power releases itself in the network and starts moving toward the node, frying the firewalls put down to protect it. 

It takes a second to burn them and the surge reaches the netrunner, frying his brain. 

"What the hell was that?! I fried the guy?!" He says with surprise. 

Slowly getting down from his high, he starts taking over the node. 

He commands the door of the warehouse to open and disconnects from the machine. 

Shots can be heard in the background. 

"Good job!" Sparrow congratulates him. 

They quickly move out of that warehouse and run toward the first one. 

When they arrive, the assault is already over and the trucks recovered by the team. 

Several bodies are being dragged out of the warehouse and captain Haaris comes out to meet Mark. 

"You fried one of these runners by yourself, son… congrats!" He says with his hand extended for a handshake. 

Mark grabs his hand and shakes it. 

"Thank you, sir… But I think I will need a check up with Meditech… Something was weird… " Mark says. 

Haaris nods and gets busy ordering people around to clean the scene. 

After the team returned to HQ, Mark decided to call Anton at Meditech. 

Anton answered very quickly. 

"Mark, how's everything going at CTIG? Happy to be back?" he asks. 

"Yeah, very happy but also very puzzled. That piece of tech I have in my head… Is it supposed to do things on its own?" Mark asks Anton. 

"What do you mean? Care to explain more?" Anton sounds a bit surprised. 

"During a run today, I felt a power surge in my head that materialized in the network… It fried a node and the runner who was plugged to it." Mark explains. 

"You will have to come to the lab for deeper analysis, but you need to understand that the tech you have in your head is designed to be controlled by your organic brain. It is possible that you were commanding it without knowing." Anton answers. 

Mark takes a moment to process the info. 

"Yeah… I was kind of "emotional" during that run… Could that have played a role?" Mark asks. 

"Very much so, but I really need to run more tests to make sure. I will send a notice to your captain, in the meantime, relax." Anton says. 

"Thanks, Anton, I will see you at the lab then." Mark says and closes the call. 

He started to wonder if he could manifest his emotions during runs, the power of his synthetic brain could be infinite. 

"Can it be that powerful?" He thinks out loud.

A message from captain Haaris came on his neural implant, informing him about Meditech requesting a check up and the time. 

Mark replied positively to the message and went on with the rest of the day's routines. 

That night he fell asleep like a baby, the power surge he released had drained him as if he went through physical exhaustion. 

His sleep was peaceful and uninterrupted.