Action window was approaching. She couldn’t delay... It was the last attempt.
            She knew exactly what to do. She had already repeated for so many times the simulation anyway. At least the latest "repetitions" were perfect, flawless. There was no doubt, especially since she knew that the simulations were all updated daily, in seconds. Monique, her outside "sense", did her job perfectly, completely... At the training, the parameters were set high, on maximum difficulty. So...
            Now stood like a movie star, from one of the old action movies, waiting for the optimum time. She stands in a theatrical posture, really strange theatrical. But, in fact, she always liked to have a flawless image, a studied. Monique, in her perfect romance, she often argues:
            - Do not give so much attention to external appearance. You don’t have anything to add to your perfection!
And she responds either against the grain either in banter:
            - It’s important for me to feel that... To feel like I’ve nothing to add to what you see... The perfection of which you still remember... What I do give me more freedom, more power. And cannot lose these feelings... And neither your admiration... Actually, I do for myself and not for others around me.
            Her Companion headset is activating signaling that is the time to take action. Visual display activates their functions and she began to see the surroundings outlined, highlighted, with the tactical elements of the mission. Data over data, descriptions of descriptions, square stake out points of presence, connection, and so on. It had been over three buildings and two with a clean scan sphere present. That was all that interested at this moment.
"Piece of cake," thinks leaving it to the first building, without thinking about anything else.
            Behind it sounded deaf safety and porting string launchers, and somewhere above her, the two anchors passed like two black shadows. His Companion visually presents the whole process of attaching anchors, rope stretcher of bearing and coordination and signaling the end of his process.
            She jumps into the abyss and savoring the sensation of falling. Soon her fall turns into a slide to the edge of the building in front of it activating signaling transport systems and then raising up the ceiling of the building. He touched the ceiling of the building and Companion ordered the recovery operation of the equipment. Once she gets confirmation of completion of the operation is moving quickly and recover the heads of traction point from initial launch and reposition the launch heads to move to the next building... Then the next...
            "Boring!” Every time she had the same feeling, whether it was about a simulation whether it was in reality. But it was too focused on saving time to think about anything else.
            Carefully analyzing the jump to the next building, which was first who have presented tactical data? Somewhere in the western corner, chances of activation a scanning process were less than 20%... A good point of insertion... But the next route has a medium risk average of 50-60%. In the eastern part, insertion risk was 80%, but the crossing route was less than 30%. Pointed launching framework to the east and activating the jump despite Companion's protests that indicate the risk too high and recommends the insertion to the west...
            The risk is my inspiration; the real danger is my expiration... What can understand these machines?!? Think during hovering between buildings.
            She reaches the building and ends traction achieving of equipment. Slow, unhurried... As usual... Quickly cross the building and arrived at the starting point to the next. All clean, without any kind of scanning.
            Risk, eh?!? Think quizzically, bored to the maximum. Intuition is not the same as the statistical calculation of my fellow craft, think as arrogant as always.
            The analysis of the last buildings has as result "zero insertion points". Almost the entire roof of the building was covered with active moving scanners. Use the zoom and focus functions of the sensors and, surprise... The top floor hosted a party. And all participants had biom. Complete reading data available and... Monique had done their job well. The data present figure this party but would have to be over by now.
            Two bioms, with their sphere of scanning, emerged from the level. Katy and Mel Arrows, husband and wife, 2 children, comes the report… He ComWolf engineer, her kindergarten teacher at "Little Flower" neighborhood... Ugh, what boredom with these reports. There were only five people.
            Somewhere, on her right side, a scanner becomes active and visual screen quickly drew its trajectory sphere. It came straight to it... 6, 5, 4 meters; indicate the proximity sensor shown by Companion. The bathroom comes an estimative indication of the target location trajectory... She moves quickly to exit in diagonally of sanitary room area but entering into a risk zone over 90%.
            The bioms of that person indicates that was ready to wake... According to the biological signals... She began a dance with the limits of the somnambulistic sphere what he needed the toilet... Jan Pogany, a 39-year-old man, freelance and many more data, comes the description given by Companion... As if mentally view what makes it... As if she sees once knew his face now and during movements... After the time of movements, he urinates… Then at the sink… He went a little bit sideways, and again to the mirror... She washed after he shook hands with his friend, faded in and out, complete her mind the full visual image. And just when he walked away and she follows his sphere, the sphere of person who woke is activated. In time for everything to not go out of perfection so common!
She fast approaches to the launch area and re-scan the roof of the front building. She could not wait because the sphere next to it is still moving through the apartment making the proximity sensor to ringing shrill, annoying. She was already pretty disappointed with how easy it was losing its focus on warning sounds. But she’s reflexes not fail any moment... They had no problem with mind games. Everything flowed into encouraging perfection.
            She is launched and reached the final block interposed with the target. Here all was OK. Quiet. Apartment owners slept already taken. They spent until they exhausted all physical resources... They were exhausted by fatigue… And alcohol, judging by the biological signs based on data reported by companion from their biom. She reached the edge of the target building. Quiet. Strangely confidently. But there was no time for questions. She fits the crossing frame; launch it, crossing the space between the blocks, reaching the target building, recovery, matching the frame to the return position... Ready for final action...
            He passed over the runway for landing, crossed quickly over the sealing door to the building, enter and began to scan the floor lower than where she was. She was descended only just down at the floor and everything had to be completed quickly. She slipped quickly on the fire escape stairs corridor and until she reached the target level scan was completed.
            Four people, active elite cadre as described the Companion. Names, dates, blah, blah... No longer interested in anything... She was too tense for that. Surveillance cameras were switched on the fire escape outside, neutralized right from the start of the mission, but those on the access hallways not. Once detected on video or audio surveillance was not long before the bioms detection that need be avoided at all costs. The last detection has cost Monique an enormous amount of time and is better not to repeat this situation. Anyone could pay for her actions, but not Monique!
            Quickly assemble the multifunctional gun and set it on fire alternately, two electromagnetic pulses, one taser. Everything was ready. It wasn’t the hardest mission that solved but had a strange emotional state, something like a presentiment what it felt even when initiated training missions. There was no more annoying than the fact that he could not identify the cause. For her, everything had to be black or white. Shades of grays have been always disturbing.
            Drawn thread scan set it to ultra speed and scan the central hall through a lightning gesture. The sensor cameras could only identify the elements present more than about one second. Apart from the situation in which they were set to high speed. If it were so her gesture as lightning would have been to be identified... But the Companion would have identified as alertness and canceled the operation. Then, she knew that a global scan may trigger location sensors and she is unwilling to risk. Look what my time in my thoughts, think irritated.
The data were processed quickly, she unlocks multifunctional weapon as shoulder weapon, and she set it on pulse fire, position it and jumps on the corridor.
            A fine noise, low, like as torn cloth sounded indicating unloading of her weapon and annihilation for up to 20 seconds of all of the 6 surveillance cameras in the hallway. Until the next corner will need much less time.
Jump, thread breakage, torn cloth, and jump and was in the lodge of next 20 seconds. Travel, fast findings of the access door to the muster area, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds to open the door, entrance and... Yes, everything was clean... Relax for 10 seconds… Deep breathing...
            He never understood why the server needed 20 seconds to reset the disconnected devices. Electrical impulses have the speed of light and I don’t think it would take more than 2 seconds for this process.
            Then, yes, the countdown to the six minutes that started from the first pulse fire displayed by the companion helmet. Why six minutes, why not more or less. Monique told him once that there may be something related to the resuscitation time without the risk of a human person without biomis. Possible…
            According to the Companion is time for the final attack. The target is at two rooms away, but in the next room, was his guard, the four guardians detected.
            She opened the door, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, thread scan, no alert, torn cloth, multifunctional snatched from her shoulder but... She does not have targets. The guards were not there...
            The door to the other rooms opened slowly, too slowly. The Companion sensed two surveillance cameras on the visual line and a scanning biom's sphere of one of the guards. She threw himself sideways and fired. Pulse, pulse, and cameras were turned off, one taser fire in the door frame, pulse in the guard’s biom, pulse the third surveillance camera that became visible by the leap, taser in guardian... That began a weird robotic dancing, being dropped due to electric shock spasms caused by the taser fire.
            The 20 seconds of resetting the surveillance cameras start, ask her to begin the assault blindly. She dived through the gap left between the guardian and space in the door and... Puls in biome’s guard first noticed, pulse in the last video camera, taser in the same guardian, pulse in the second guardian, pulse in the target biome, taser in next guardian...
            The first did not know what was happening but the second was already in fighting position, advancing toward her with baton shocks very close to touching her with the sphere biom's.
The room was now empty of guards and the target was staring at her with terrified eyes, dropping some cards from his hand.
            This is why there were no guards in the guard room... They were playing cards with the target... Deh, boredom shall be paid, think at cold. Pulse, pulse in the floor. The gesture confuses the target, which is confirmed by the Companion, while she introduced in multifunction weapon an over-taser cell. Then stick multifunctional on the target forehead, right between the eyes, and act the weapon. The target shall enter into epileptic seizures that marked the fulfillment of its assignment. Not even interesting what happens with it, how falls or where it falls.
            This brain it has been deleted, think at cold, engaging multifunctional on the shoulder and sprinting towards the door. Jump, crackling annihilation of surveillance cameras... Ran... A new leap, crackle and in front of the door to the stairway fire stood the last guardian.
            She was really surprised. She forgot about it. He knew it had to do with four guards, smashed three and with the target is four. Her brain has completed the number of targets and the relaxation induces by the completing of the mission overlapped conclusion related to the number of initial targets... Card game requires four people... Three guards and the target... How she hasn't thought, completing the error of the mind too occupied by something else?!? She snatched the weapon from his shoulder and fired. Pulse in the guard biome, pulse in the electric shock baton and taser in the guard. This bounces up unnatural and fell leaping, back in epileptic seizure... Spasms shifted rapidly in a grotesque position where the seizures seemed like a sort of effort to swim...
            Oh, sorry, I forgot enabled over-taser cell, think ironically leaping over the body of the guard. Unnatural games of fate continue the thought while she slipping through the access door to the stairwell.
            Silence... Relaxation... I have time for a little breathing, she thought to fall to her knees as if they no longer could support her. She walked bending her head back and breathing deeply.
            Poor guard, really I did not wish for this outcome. Who was he? Request information from the Fellowcraft. Ronnie Gautier instantly came the answer. Too bad for him! And stop the course of thoughts through the countdown of entry into the alarm status... 3 minutes 39 seconds.
            The general alarm started... But where are the nearly 4 minutes?!? Companion requested immediate evacuation from the area of action.
            Biom sensors have enabled and have been notified of the condition of a critical state of the target... Anyway, the target can no longer be saved, neither she nor Ronnie guardian... Well, I asked the guard data before... From now on they cannot ask because I born a lead research by Monique... Shame...
            Already reached the platform and... Leaps made them without any problem and quickly reached the starting point... Hence retreat to the "Heart" was a mere formality.
            All the way she did not have any other thoughts, but the regrets related to the guard... The target deserves his fate once she had received the reset mission from the center. But the sucker who guarded him... Ohhh...
            She reached her apartment without any kind of incidents. Enter the "Heart" and unequipped slowly, almost exhausted... She put everything in its place, mechanical, unhurried, remembering each stage of the mission has just concluded... Everything was perfect, less error with the guard... The Centre will not ask for this collateral loss as long as she did not kill anybody or not produced irreversible disability. That guy will be recovered in its entirety as being, reintegrated and all those... But it will be somebody else's life... Too bad about his life’s years removed from its error!
            And she shuddered at the thought that she might lose all her memories and knowledge. She had a kind of flash of mind which overlapped the guard's face with Rick's face. Realizing that she was lifted up his right arm, with the index finger pointing ceiling in a kind of gesture of the discovering something, she could not refrain from exclaiming: "Seriously?!?".
            This is not my kind of behavior. What’s going on?!? Be to blame her feelings for Rick?!? Love, or whatever what lives for quite some time, even softens the spirit...
            Her confusion continues during her showering hygiene. Long lost under the running water jet, being off to the expiry of the quota of water, this diminishes the flow of water, marking his to clear washing debris and to finish.
            After finishing the shower, she dressed summary and lay in bed trying to escape from the avalanche of thoughts and regrets that no longer cease...

            Hint: 1. The course of "stories" can lead to where the lack of some knowledge about classical, unassisted by technology battles, as well as unapplied of martial battles in survival conditions with  "no rules", will  "cost" on your character. You decide what you'll manage later when it's necessary to choose !

            2. For example, this choice will attract the "jump" on the "version 1" (V01) of the game (for the tangency with Ronnie) on V06 - V10, depending on the subsequent choices (avoiding the tangency with Gautier) - valid only for the "feminine" storyline.

Dorin M - November 12, 2017