Crouching in front of the dead corpse, Allen Draco inspected the gruesome remains of agent Darrel Hellion. The agent laid mangled and broken beside the supply crate. Gaping punctures to his torso confirmed that these were from another agent impaling him with their fists. Bones that he identified as ribs jutted out of Darrel’s flesh and armor. Two of Darrel’s fellow agents nearby weren’t in any better condition. Allen shook his head and stood up. He grabbed the plasma minigun off his back and stepped away from three bodies. His boots still made a wet squishy noise with each step with the pool on the dry soil.

  He knew with absolute certainty that no typical tier zero or one could do this to a trained and experienced tier two agent. His newest squadmates Dan and Li had fought and beaten Kodak tier twos before during the heist, an impressive feat for both of them. But they had never inflicted wounds like this against their enemies before. Not according to the recent mission report published by Michael Cynosa.

  He reviewed his own stats and his HUD pulled up the numbers.

  Agent: Allen Draco

  Age: 28 M

  Shard: Alpha Corporation

  Rank: Tier 3 | Level 52

  Strength: 80

  Agility: 54

  Endurance: 70

  Intelligence: 56

  Healing Factor: n/a

  Reflex: Superhuman +

  It had been a short time since he had reached tier three in rank and also received his white suit to go along with his recent promotion. His HUD popped up with a notification straight from Alpha command, his favorite to interact with. Well, not really, he thought.

  “Allen Draco, this is Alpha command,” a levelled husky voice said in the channel. “Be advised that the broadcast for the Combat Games is still ongoing. While you are free to deal with the intruders with whatever means necessary, footage captured will be censored and highlights will be heavily edited.”

  “Okay? And this is relevant, how?” Allen replied. He wasn’t blind to what the Alpha Corp was doing. They knew there was a threat here. But they couldn’t justify the costs associated with shutting down and cancelling the Combat Games. All the money sunk into the facilities, selling astronomically-priced VIP tickets, and sponsorships, was something the shard didn’t want to flush down the drain, even if there was a dangerous threat to their contestants.

  So the Alpha Corp came to a compromise they thought was “reasonable.” They send in guys like Allen to handle the intruders while the shard manipulates whatever footage gets captured of his epic confrontation of the threat and they release a heavily edited and curtailed version to the public, making the Combat Games more thrilling for the viewers.

  At this point, Allen wouldn’t put it past the shard to somehow go a step further and admit that they had enemy agents from rival shards who thought the Combat Games were such hot shit that they would disguise themselves as eligible contestants and compete.

  “This heads up is a courtesy,” the voice said. “Mop up the intruders and keep the games moving.”

  Alpha command cut the call, which didn’t surprise Allen. While the shard was the lesser of the three evils compared to Kodak-Cresh and the Church of Nanotology, they were still a big corporation that valued their dollars.

  Allen moved through the deteriorating forest. His HUD emphasized a waypoint that was Jane’s last known location. Even with heavy gear, Allen ran and weaved around bushes and trees. From time to time, he used the heft of his minigun and smacked aside annoying shrubbery or branches. He made it another fifty meters before his HUD notified him of two friendlies up ahead.

  Allen ran into a pair of Alpha agents who watched his approach. One sat on a tree stump armed with a crack shot cannon while the other stood with a designated marksman rifle. Both wore the standard black-clad Alpha agent armor with long coats with sleek contoured body armor underneath. They wore boxy and angular visored helmets that made them look robotic in Allen’s eyes. A quick scan of their stats showed they were tier twos. The one on the stump with the crack shot cannon was level thirty-seven while the other was level twenty-nine.

  He kept his guard up as the sporadic echoes and cracks of gunfire through the landscape reminded him that there were allies and contestants mixed in with these intruders. From the intel he got from Alpha command, Allen knew that these infiltrators were using some bizarre tech that allowed them to appear as anything they wished.

  “You guys tired already?” Allen said jokingly.

  “No sir,” the one on the stump said. “But this is getting tedious. We’ve been following the trails of bodies these assholes have been leaving but still no dice. They’re good at evading us, I’ll give them that.”

  “Darrel hasn’t been responding to any of my calls,” the other one with the DMR said. “Neither Sarah nor Johnny.”

  “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, both all three are dead. Found their bodies at one of the weapons caches. They got fucked up pretty bad,” Allen said.

  The agent lowered his DMR and held his helmet low while the one on the stump suddenly jerked his helmet up at him.

  “Let’s stick together. We’re not dealing with a couple of lightweights here.”

  “Yes sir,” both said in unison.

  Allen stepped forward and revved up the barrels of his plasma minigun. Obviously, he didn’t fire the weapon. But spinning the barrels served as a nonverbal gesture of confidence in this situation. He walked past the two agents and both followed closely behind him.

  “Right behind you sir,” one of them said.

  Allen looked over his shoulder. “Appreciate it. Keep that crack shot cannon primed and ready to fire. No overcharged shots. We might have to shoot fast so don’t waste time with a bigger laser.”

  The agent’s crack shot cannon was a specialized weapon that fired a devastating beam of charged concentrated particles. Such a weapon was the ideal one-shot, one-kill solution against enemy agents, even against energy shields. The wielder could either fire instant shots or pull and hold the trigger for an overcharged shot that needed time to charge up and fire.

  Jane’s waypoint was another two-hundred-thirty meters away deep into the forest. Allen and his small band emerged out into a small open outcropping between all the skeletal trees and bushes.

  At the corner of his eye, Allen spotted figures moving out of the trees and out into the open to his right. At a glance, they were just a trio of contestants. Their bulkier armor and the booster jets along their limbs and protruding backs indicated they were Genesis Talons. The subsidiary shard of the Alpha Corp focused on shock and awe tactics mixed in with ariel movements.

  Allen would have ignored them were it not for two elements that immediately flashed through his mind. For one, the trio of agents emerged out of the forest, specifically in the same direction where Jane’s waypoint was. Their movements were rushed and unnatural. He wondered why the trio weren’t using their jets to jump and stride across the ground without taking flight up in the air.

  The most troubling detail about these Genesis Talons was the flickering and shimmering Allen caught on one of them. The particular Talon had to slow down their run and make their movements more deliberate and robotic to reduce the strange effect.

  He narrowed his eyes at the trio and stopped. His two accompanying agents stopped behind him and Allen opened up a private channel with both of them.

  “Let’s go greet that team of Talons. They might help us paint a picture of what happened at Jane’s coordinates.”

  The two agents exchanged glances with each other. While both were wearing helmets, Allen could easily tell neither of them doubted any value would come out of a few young contestants from the tournament.

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  Allen turned his heel toward the team of Talons and ran after them. “Hey you three. Stop where you are.”

  Instead of stopping, the team did the opposite. The trio tried picking up the pace and Allen spotted the same flickering and shimmering along their armor, this time from all three. A detail he noticed put him on edge, as a strange flicker along the upper shoulder armor on one revealed a piece of armor with spikes jutting out of it. Only Kodak-Cresh had armor with spikes as both a stylistic and defensive choice.

  The only thing scenario that popped into Allen’s mind that made sense was that these three were who they appeared to be and were using an archaic form of camouflage to disguise themselves. The limited reports the Alpha Corp had on the Church of Nanotology documented an unknown method of camouflage the fanatics used that was called stolen projection.

  “I said stop you jackasses. That’s an order,” Allen said. He spun the barrels of his plasma minigun and the trio wised up and complied. All three stopped in their tracks before they made it to the edge of the open area between the forests.

  As they halted in their tracks, Allen saw the shimmering and flickering in their appearances stop. They now looked like regular Genesis Talons to any normal passerby. But Allen wasn’t so easily fooled.

  Now it made sense how these intruders had made it through almost the entire tournament without much trouble. They took on the disguises of an existing team and most likely swapped out appearances using their stolen projection tech. But the archaic technology belonged to the Church and yet Allen briefly saw through their disguises and saw Kodak armor. How did Kodak get their hands on tech belonging to those fanatics?

  Allen approached them slowly. He kept his minigun barrels spinning that produced an audible hum, loud enough for this trio to hear. “Turn around slowly with your hands up.”

  The other two agents accompanying Allen caught up with him and stood beside him.

  “Sir, isn’t this a little excessive? These are just kids,” one agent said.

  “We’re all on edge right now,” the one with the crack shot whispered. “I don’t think pestering a couple of upstarts is going to help us find these intruders.”

  He noticed the trio were turning around way too slowly for his liking. “I ordered you three to turn around and keep your hands up where I can see them. Hurry up!”

  The trio continued to turn their bodies at a glacial pace, seemingly on purpose. Then one of them made a move.

  Before Allen could open fire, the Genesis Talon reached down and grabbed something off her belt. The agent had some hilt in her hand before a glowing purple blade ignited. Allen knew that was a viper fang sword and somehow this agent had the quicker hand than he did.

  “Shit!” one of the Alpha agents said.

  The intruder lashed out with a swing of her purple sword. A wave of dark violet energies emerged out of the blade and slashed the space between the two groups of agents. The wave of dark energy flew at Allen with surprising speed. He barely had time to shove one of his allies out of the way and narrowly avoided the wave cutting him in half.

  His other companion wasn’t so lucky.

  Allen looked up and saw the agent with the DMR with a glowing cut through his armor and blood gushing out of the perfect cut through his suit and flesh. The agent collapsed to the ground and his upper half split apart from the rest of him. The wave of violet energy casually sliced through trees and bushes before dissipating.

  “What the fuck is that?” the crack shot agent said.

  “No time for questions. These are the asshole we’re looking for,” Allen snapped.

  Allen hastily stood back up and hefted his minigun. He spun the barrels of his favorite gun and aimed at the trio of intruders. He squeezed hard on both the handle guard and the trigger of his minigun, ready to send a volley of hot plasma at these assholes.

  The sword-wielding intruder raised her arm into the air and a ball of white energy began forming just above her closed fist. At the moment the blue muzzle flashes engulfed the barrels of his minigun, the intruder threw down the white ball of energy into the ground at her feet and the trio became enveloped in a perfect half circle.

  The barrier the intruder created was a perfect half circle that had a shiny translucent sheen on it. The stream of hot plasma smashed into the strange barrier and failed to penetrate. Plasma pellets that could melt through walls and armored hulls of vehicles had been absorbed by the barrier.

  Allen’s only remaining companion raised his crack shot cannon at the barrier and blasted an intense beam of concentrated particles from his weapon. A brilliant golden beam of energy flashed into the air, briefly illuminating the entire open area before smashing into the barrier.

  Opening a public channel for all nearby agents sent in by Alpha command, Allen shouted one simple sentence. “I have eyes on our intruders.”

  Allen’s HUD marked a waypoint on the shield bubble the intruders had made themselves. The beam from the crack shot caused the energy barrier to flicker and wave, nearly compromising the perfect shape of the half circle. Somehow, it still ate up the beam and remained strong.

  The last time Allen checked, Kodak never employed the use of shield barriers like this, especially not magical ones. The intruder gathered up a ball of energy in her hand and threw it down at her feet and formed the barrier to protect her and her teammates.

  The sooner they kill or capture these intruders, the better. Whatever strange powers and technology these assholes were using would soon come to light and the Alpha Corp can adapt and strengthen their defenses and security to make sure an infiltration like this never happened again.

  The agent fired another two blasts from the crack shot cannon at the barrier to no avail. The energy barrier flicked in and out of existence and the half circle shape warped and twisted. One more blast was needed. Allen revved up the barrels of his minigun once more.

  A dark blur rushed out of the barrier and Allen saw the purple glow of the viper fang sword charging at him. The minigun fired and streams of plasma sizzled toward the charging intruder. Allen’s eyes widened when the dark blur sidestepped and weaved through the hot blue plasma. He barely had time to sidestep and wide slash from the purple blade.

  Allen regained his footing and his energy shields had been broken and completely depleted just from a glancing hit. The agent with the crack shot wasn’t so lucky. The purple blade cleaved through the agent’s side and bisected the special weapon. The power source for the cannon glowed intensely with gold and sparked. The intruder dashed away before the damaged crack shot cannon exploded, taking the agent with it.

  “Shit!”

  As fast as the intruder was, his eyes still tracked the enemy’s movements and he readied his minigun. His weapon spat more hot plasma across the open space. The streams that missed the mark hit the surrounding trees and shrubbery. As if the forest couldn’t get more skeletal and devoid of life, the plasma pellets ignited and eat their way through dry soil and bark. Numerous small fires began spreading in the background of Allen’s barrage of minigun fire.

  The intruder with the viper fung swung her sword and launched another wave of dark energy at him. Allen hopped out of the path of the wave of destruction as it parted the soil where he stood a moment ago. The opening in the ground expanded, stopping just shy of a full sinkhole. The gash in the dry soil steamed and deepened, so much so that even Allen’s enhanced eyes couldn’t quite see the bottom.

  The waves of violet energy that slashed the air toward him were fast, but Allen had little trouble simply sidestepping the bizarre attacks. As far as he knew, the viper fang sword was the most advanced and finely crafted blade in the world. But he never recalled the ability for the sword to produce waves of energy that could cut through objects.

  He kept his minigun’s barrels spinning, firing short bursts of plasma while trying to track his target. The energy barrier that enveloped the other two intruders flashed out of existence and both made a beeline towards the smoking remains of the forest behind them. Both of his fellow agents were dead and he was too preoccupied dealing with the sword-wielding intruder.

  With surprising speed beyond that of a tier one, the intruder threw down a grenade her side of the open area began filling with a giant expanding cloud of smoke. Allen continued blasting his minigun into the smoke. In rapid succession, three streaks of concentrated violet energy blasted out of the smoke. He dived to the side and narrowly evaded the waves of energy that flew past him.

  More trees collapsed behind Allen, along with a shriek coming from a mutated coyote that was bisected into three pieces by the attacks. He stood back up and pointed his minigun toward the cloud of smoke. The area had become eerily quiet and his ears didn’t pick up anything from inside the smoke cloud. Not even footsteps from the intruder.

  The waypoint he placed on the team of intruders disappeared. Allen exhaled at their escape. These assholes were slippery.

  The cloud of smoke eventually dissipated and Allen stepped closer to investigate. The most bizarre observation he made was the lack of footprints in the ground. Even in such dry soil like this, the weight of a fully armored agent would leave something in the ground. But he saw nothing. Allen could feel the sweat dripping down the side of his face. The only plausible explanation was if that particular intruder was part of the Church. The fanatics of that shard possess the ability to teleport short distances using their magic.

  He made a reluctant call to Alpha command.

  “Just engaged the enemy. One of them has strange powers that seems a lot like magic,” he said.

  “Say again Allen Draco. Did you say magic?”

  “Affirmative. One of them created an energy barrier to shield her teammates and she had a viper fang sword that could shoot waves of energy, cutting everything in its path. These intruders could be from the Church but I’m not sure. They appeared to be wearing Kodak armor underneath their disguises. Those assholes got away.”

  He didn’t like the momentary pause at the end.

  “Continue your pursuit. Alpha command, out.”

  The operator cut the call and Allen was left in the middle of a deteriorating forest in the middle of what was only a step above an uninhabitable wasteland. The forest was already devoid of green and natural wildlife, which wasn’t surprising since this was near the site of the Chernobyl disaster hundreds of years ago. From the furious attacks of violet energy from the intruder and Allen’s plasma, numerous trees had either collapsed or were heavily damaged with charred bark. Small embers still flared within the forest beyond him and little whisps of flame flew into the air and dissolved.

  “What a fucking mess,” Allen said.

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