James awoke to the soft hum of the room’s climate control. Sheets tangled around his legs, bodies pressed close on either side—two women, both asleep, their breathing slow and even in the morning stillness. One had long black hair draped across his chest. The other had an arm flung over his stomach, her nails painted a chipped, metallic rose—the same faded color smeared across his jaw in the form of lipstick.
He exhaled, quiet and amused, as thin blades of sunlight cut through the blinds and across the bed. Hell of a night.
Carefully, he slid free from the mess of limbs, the sheets whispering against bare skin. The movement made the dog tags on his chest clink faintly—cold metal tapping bone. A sharp, familiar sound. He reached for his shirt, slinging it over his shoulder before grabbing his boots.
He paused at the edge of the bed. Looked back.
They were still asleep. Bodies half-curled around each other, hair splayed like smoke across the sheets.
He left without a word.
His own suite was colder. Cleaner. The couch had been pushed aside to make room for his gear—racks of weapons and ammo, a pile of folded outerwear, and a half-gutted drone charging on the floor.
He kicked the door shut behind him and crossed to the reinforced storage bench near the far wall.
The next hour belonged to routine.
Piece by piece, he laid out every weapon. Pistol. Rifle. Knives. Spare mags. He stripped them down one at a time, checking slides, barrels, triggers. Oiling each part, wiping clean, reassembling with methodical precision. It was muscle memory—precise, quiet, efficient. Like a priest tending relics before a sermon.
When the last round was loaded and the final mag seated, he reached for the dog tags at his chest. None were new. All of them worn—scorched, dented, their edges dulled by time and friction.
He turned them over in his palm, thumb brushing each name without pause. No prayer. No hesitation.
Then he clipped them back onto the chain and let them fall.
They clinked softly against his sternum.
He stood still in the center of the room, wearing nothing but his boxers, watching the light bleed across the floor. It was time.
He began to dress, slowly and sure—layer by layer, strap by strap—until the man who stepped into the room was gone, and only the weapon remained.
Hours later, the rotors howled overhead, shaking the cabin in steady pulses as the helicopter carved through the night sky. Rain streaked the windows in thin silver lines, blurring the world beyond into a wash of gray and distant lights from other aircraft.
Inside the bird, five figures sat in silence.
James sat near the rear, back to the hull, legs apart, HK resting between his knees. The dog tags around his neck clinked faintly with every sway of the aircraft. He hadn’t spoken since lift-off.
To his left crouched Mason "Wrench" Kade, hunched over a compact duffel bag lined with charges. He moved with quiet precision, flipping switches, checking timers, inspecting each device like a surgeon. His face was a slab of worn stone—eyes sharp, hands steady despite the turbulence. Their demo man, through and through.
“Still can’t believe they let a civvie lead this op,” Lt. Devon Rios muttered from across the cabin, breaking the silence.
He didn’t look at James when he said it. Just kept wiping down his rifle’s scope, methodical and clean. Professional. SDS to the bone. His tone was calm, but the edge was unmistakable.
James didn’t respond. His gaze stayed locked on the window, watching the rain blur across the glass.
“Are you volunteering to take his place?” Kyra "Ghost" Levan chimed in without looking up from her data-slate. She sat cross-legged, cords trailing from the ports in her wrists into a portable uplink node on the floor. Her eyes glowed faintly behind her augment lenses, flickering with each HUD shift. “Because I’d love to see how far you make it past the drop point. Personally, I’d rather the Reaper be up in the front.”
Cpl. Elias Tran snorted, trying to hide it behind a cough. He was the youngest, jittery but trying to fake calm. His fingers tapped against his thigh, restless. His gear looked too new, barely scratched. Fresh.
Rios didn’t reply.
James finally leaned forward, voice low but clear. “You’re not here to like me. You’re here to do a job. I was paid to make sure that job doesn’t go sideways.”
“Right,” Rios muttered. “Assuming we’re not already walking into a goddamn hornet’s nest.”
James gave a slow nod. “Oh, we definitely are.”
The comms system crackled to life overhead. <
Then, the opening riff of “Fortunate Son” tore through the cabin’s speakers—raw, distorted by old speakers, but unmistakable.
James let out a faint snort. “They still use this? It’s over two centuries old.”
Ghost grinned, finally unplugging from her uplink and standing in one fluid motion. “Can’t fix perfection,” she said, giving him a wink.
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She rolled her shoulders, just starting to speak—“Alright with that, their automated AA grid is down, but I expec—”
She never finished.
A shrill tone blared through the cabin—missile locks.
“Shit!” Rios barked, grabbing the overhead bar as the helicopter jerked violently left. James gritted his teeth as his shoulder slammed into the hull.
The sky outside erupted.
Tracer rounds lit the clouds like electric rain. Below, ground-based manned AA emplacements spun up, spitting white-hot streaks of death into the air. The other helios flared out, countermeasures launching in arcs of glowing chaff and false heat signatures. Explosions bloomed across the night sky—violent orange flowers opening against the dark.
Two of the lead birds banked hard, unloading missile salvos into enemy fortifications. Buildings lit up in fireballs, their concrete bones collapsing in on themselves. A third helo took a hit mid-roll—engines flared, tail ripped clean off, and it spun out in a flaming spiral.
“Kane, you lying bastard,” James hissed, gripping a handhold as the aircraft rocked under pressure. “You said this would be a quiet in.”
Another missile detonated just outside, the shockwave rattling every bolt in the cabin. Flames licked across the viewports, casting everyone in strobing orange light. Sirens screamed overhead, metal shrieked, and the smell of burning fuel mixed with ozone and adrenaline.
Over the chaos, the pilot’s voice cut through like a knife:
<
A red light snapped on above the ramp. The bay door whined open to reveal the roof of their target building—an old government structure buried deep in cartel territory, now swarming with figures below.
The city screamed with war—distant artillery thunder, sirens, shouting. Far off the few SDS fighters streaked over the skyline, their engines roaring as they opened fire into the heart of Rochester.
The red light turned yellow.
James stood, rolling his shoulders once. He adjusted his sunglasses like this was just another Tuesday.
Then green.
He jumped.
The wind hit like a punch. Cold, sharp, full of grit. James dropped fast, eyes narrowed behind his glasses as tracer fire cut through the clouds below. He waited—counting the distance in breaths, not seconds—until the rooftop came into view. He could make out the guards now. Three of them.
He yanked the ripcord.
The chute snapped open above him with a violent crack. The harness bit deep into his chest as the wind dragged him sideways, whipping smoke and burning ash across his face. The rooftop was coming up fast—way too fast. The chute barely slowed him down.
Fifteen feet from the rooftop, he cut it.
Freefall.
He dropped like a hammer, his gene-enhanced muscles tensing, eyes locked on the landing zone. At that distance, he hit at just under ten miles per hour. It would enough to break a normal man’s leg.
Not James.
He landed hard—knees bent, one hand down to catch the weight, the other already raising his HK to his shoulder. The rooftop cracked under him, dust exploding around his boots like a shockwave. Behind him, the chute collapsed in a whisper of nylon.
The first guard didn’t even get a sound out.
James hit him like a freight train, boot slamming into the man’s chest with a sickening crunch. Ribs caved inward like paper, air exploding from his lungs as he was lifted off his feet and launched backward. He flew clear off the rooftop, vanishing into the smoke and rain below with a fading scream and a final, wet thud that echoed off concrete.
The second guard spun, rifle rising—but James was already moving. A knife spun from his hand, burying itself in the man’s eye with a crack of shattered bone. The rifle clattered to the rooftop.
He screamed—briefly.
James was on him in a blink, slamming a second blade into the side of his skull. He grabbed both knives and ripped them free in opposite directions, the sound wet and violent, nearly tearing the man’s skull apart before kicking the corpse off his boot and letting it collapse like a broken puppet.
The third guard raised his weapon—only to catch a high-velocity shot to the throat, fired clean from Ghost’s suppressed sidearm. She appeared behind the rooftop vent like a shadow, eyes glowing faintly behind her aug lenses.
“Told you the Reaper didn’t need backup,” she muttered, already moving to cover the roof access point.
James stepped back from the ledge, breathing slow, even. The rooftop was slick with rain the wind tugging at his coat like impatient fingers. Below him, the city burned.
From his perch, he had a clear view of the northern skyline—Rochester in chaos.
Columns of smoke rose like funeral pyres. Fires spread across the outer districts, painting the low clouds in a dull orange glow. The air raid was still finishing—streams of SDS aircraft carving wide arcs overhead, dropping precision munitions onto bunkers, towers, and fortified intersections.
Explosions flared in the distance. Sharp flashes. Muffled booms. One building crumpled inward, sending a wave of debris into the street below. A mechanized gun emplacement fired blindly into the sky before a railgun round from a passing SDS gunship tore it in half.
And then—slowly—the roar began to fade.
The last of the gunships peeled off, banking toward the horizon like steel birds retreating to their nests. No more bombs fell. No more cannons fired.
Only the flames were left. And the distant wail of panicked sirens echoing between shattered buildings.
James watched it all with a calm, calculating eye.
In the street below, cartel fighters scrambled—shouting orders, waving others toward fallback positions. Vehicles screeched across the cracked asphalt, trying to reposition ahead of whatever they thought came next.
They had no idea they were already bleeding from the neck.
James knelt by the rooftop’s edge, unslinging his pack and setting it down quietly. One hand tapped his radio, a short, sharp click breaking the static.
“We’re in,” he said flatly. “Roof’s clear. Visibility’s good.”
Ghost’s voice crackled through the wind. “Cameras are down. SDS is pulling back. No eyes on the building anymore—we’re dark.”
Wrench came in next. “Charges are prepped. Ready to plant once we breach.”
“Hold position,” James said. “We move at sundown. Let the panic settle.”
The last two team members climbed over the edge of the rooftop. Devon landed smooth, rifle already up, scanning the skyline. Elias wasn’t as lucky—he winced as he came down hard, his knee slamming into the concrete with a muted thud.
James turned to him. “Is that going to be a problem?”
Elias straightened, forcing the pain behind his voice. “No, sir. Not one bit.”
James gave a nod, then turned back toward the edge.
Below, Rochester burned. The sun was already dipping behind the wrecked skyline, casting long, warped shadows over the chaos. Fires danced in the alleys, licking upward like the city itself was trying to scream.
The real fight hadn’t started yet.
But by the time it did… their command would already be dead.