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  "Whoa, did you see this?"

  "What is it?"

  "It's called Terminal."

  He swiped his hand across to push the same news story over to the news projection in front of Mason. They were both mesmerised as they read the article.

  "A prototype device to allow terminal effects within V games such as Duel Reality. Death in the game...means death in the real world. Wait, what?" Mason asked in disbelief.

  "It's just in testing, but look at the shares it's getting."

  Mason gasped as he saw the millions of worldwide shares the news story had already had.

  "People want this?"

  "We brought in pain receptors to acknowledge hits. Look at what that added to our fights."

  "Sure, but this is the real deal. Might as well go and duel for real."

  "Except that would be savage, wouldn't it? Blood sports have long since been banned," replied Carter.

  "So, you'd be up for this?"

  "I don't know, but it's an exciting prospect, isn't it? Think what it would be like."

  "We live on a knife edge as it is, so why make it worse? The whole world is about to go full fireball, and you want to try and kill each other before it can happen?"

  "I didn't say I was sure. I said it was an interesting idea. That’s all."

  "How the hell does it work anyway?" Mason continued to flick through the article, but Carter was well ahead of him.

  "They’re kind of like the receptors we were using, but more extreme. The mind is tricked into believing it is real, and so death in the game causes the brain to die."

  "That's a happy thought. What about other wounds, what happens if you lose an arm? Do you really lose that as well?"

  "It says the neural pathways cause the body to believe the injuries are real, and so loss of feeling and control of limbs would result from wounds that would be powerful enough to do so in the real world. Although physiotherapy can allow users to regain control of their body."

  "That's a happy thought. Who the hell would want to play like that?"

  "I think the greater question is who would want to watch it, and you probably know the answer to that already."

  "Hey, I am up for doing all kinds of crazy shit to up our numbers, but this? It's insane. Surely you can see that."

  "Maybe."

  * * *

  22 nd July 2071

  The South-East Frontier, Charlie Sector

  "What are we looking at here?" Axel asked.

  They were in a tiny surveillance room with Ned sitting in front of a dozen screens.

  "I shouldn't be showing you this," he said wearily.

  "Yeah, whatever. I don’t care, just tell me."

  "Do you know what sort of trouble I could get into?"

  "You came to tell us for a reason, and you could have gone straight to the boss, but

  you didn't, did you? You came to us? Now I want to know why. It had to be pretty damn interesting."

  He was thinking if he wanted to take it further.

  "Goddamnit, Ned, we deserve to know what went on. It was us out there fighting."

  "Not really, you were no more in danger than I was."

  "You know what I am saying. We are asked to get jobs done. We need to know what the hell it is that we are facing."

  He hesitantly agreed and brought up cam footage from Axel's Liberator as he had been running into the enemy facility. It was as he had remembered, bursting through into the facility, only to have an EMP kill the signal.

  "There's nothing new here. I was there. I saw this with my own eyes."

  "Clearly, you didn't see everything."

  He re-wound and footage and played it again, but this time at ten percent speed when they breached the room. He stopped it just before the EMP ignited.

  "What, what is it?"

  "You still don't see it?" Ned asked.

  He finally zoomed in on the view to a crate at the centre of the room, and Axel felt his heart almost stop.

  "What, what is it?"

  All Ava could see was a crate with stencil markings that she didn't recognise.

  "Nuclear weapons, they've got nukes," said Juan in disbelief.

  "What? How?" Ava asked.

  "Why have you not taken this to the boss?"

  "I did. I did, Axel, but he didn't care."

  "Didn't care?" Victor was shocked at that.

  "He said it was probably an empty crate, and so nothing to worry about."

  "What the fuck?" Juan swore.

  Axel ripped the door open to rush out of the room.

  "Wait, where are you going?" Ned asked.

  "To find out why the hell we aren't back out there finishing the job we started," he snarled.

  He strode down the corridor to the boss' room. The same suit wearing ass that had ripped them apart for losing the Liberators. He tore the door open and stepped inside. The boss, Jamie Newton, was in a conference call with several high ranking officers.

  "Excuse me, but I am busy right now."

  "You knew, you knew about what we found there, and you said nothing."

  "I am in the middle of a conversation here. You..."

  But Axel wasn't going to take no for an answer. He rushed to the wall of power cables and ripped them all out. All of Newton's screens immediately lost power as everything cut out.

  "What the hell do you think you are doing?"

  Axel didn't have time for his tough talk.

  "You knew what we found there, because you were told and shown it. They may well have nukes in there!"

  "And?"

  "And? ILAN rebels with nukes? You know how goddamn serious that is. So don't play games with me!"

  "There are no games here. We have our orders."

  "Why are you ducking this?"

  "I am not ducking anything. I have reported everything about your mission, including Ned's concerns. He need not have troubled you with them."

  "Hell, he shouldn't have! Do you have any idea what Nukes could do in the hands of those guys? I won't walk on by and do nothing."

  "Those are your orders."

  "This isn't the Army anymore."

  "No, but you are paid to do a job."

  "Damn right, and I am going to go and do it." He stormed out of the room.

  "You won't do it with company assets!" he yelled.

  Axel shook his head in astonishment, but he knew he shouldn't have been surprised. The rest of his team had been waiting for his return. They followed him as he passed by, heading straight for the armoury.

  "I guess that went well?" Ava said sarcastically.

  "Newton won't do anything, so we're on our own."

  He reached the high security door to their squad’s armoury. She grabbed him and pulled him around, forcing him to face the rest of them.

  "What do you mean he'll do nothing? These are nukes we are talking about."

  "For whatever reason, he’s not interested. Now I don't know whether those are his orders, of if he is just being an asshole, but I don't care. The one thing we know for certain is that ILAN with nukes is a very bad thing. They wouldn't shy away from using them against major cities. We all know that."

  "Agreed, but what are we supposed to do about it?"

  "What we are trained to do. We fight." He punched in the codes and stepped into the room. He opened his locker and took out his body armour, throwing it over his body.

  "We don't have any more Liberators to use right now, not until they are repaired."

  "He's going out there himself, Ava," said Victor.

  "What? That's crazy."

  "Yes, it is crazy. This whole situation is crazy. But I didn't risk my ass over the years to see nukes in the hands of these assholes."

  "You are talking about going into a combat zone for real?"

  "Yes, come on, Juan. It's not like we haven't done it before, is it?"

  "We've run protection details, but we've not gone into a combat zone in person in what, five years?"

  "Worried that you
're rusty?"

  "No, I'm worried about getting my head blown off."

  Axel ignored him as he strapped his armour down, threw on his helmet, and began loading magazines into his webbing.

  "Come on. This is crazy," said Juan.

  When he got no response from Axel, he turned to Ava for support.

  "If this has to be done, and if nobody else is willing, then I guess it’s on us," she replied and began to gear up.

  "There are four of us, four!" Juan yelled.

  "Yes, and we’ll hit them hard. Their defences are down. The EMP will have knocked out everything their end, too. Plus we have the cover of night. A team of four might just get into those ruins unnoticed."

  "Yeah? And what about us getting back out? And let's say we do find a nuke? Or multiple nukes, what then, what do we do?"

  Axel shrugged.

  "I guess we'll figure that out when we find whatever is in there."

  He picked up his rifle from the rack, a carbine of bullpup design. Ava was still gearing up, but the other two remained frozen in disbelief.

  "Look, I signed up to fight a good fight. We may now fight for a company and not our country, but we all know that it's pretty much the same thing these days. ILAN are monsters, and if they have nukes, well, hell. They could hit cities of millions of people. I won't stand by and let that go, no matter what anyone says. I can't do it without you, and you know that, but I am going no matter what. So what’s it gonna be?"

  Victor sighed and finally nodded in agreement. Juan knew he couldn't let them go it alone.

  "All right, then, let's do this. Gear up. It's time to go old school. We go quietly where we can. Suppressors, NVGs, let's play this smart."

  * * *

  CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

  United American Nations

  Troy Sparks opened his drawer and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He poured some into his coffee, slamming the bottle back into the drawer as the buzzer to his office door sounded. He took a sip and winced at how harsh it was before checking who it was. He opened the door to find two of his agents waiting. They didn't seem to know one another.

  "Come in. Please, take a seat."

  The man was Hud Bowler. In his forties and quite casually dressed for an agent. He looked cool, calm, and confident, with a blasé attitude. Unlike most of them, he didn't wear a suit, but a leather jacket and an off-white Henley shirt. The other was a woman in a smart suit, but she looked anxious and alert. The sort of person that knew a lot, was wickedly smart, but could never relax.

  "Hud Bowler, meet Nui Stanford, your new partner," said Sparks.

  "What? What are you talking about, Sir?" Nui asked.

  "Come on, you know I don't work this way," protested Hud.

  They looked at one another as if they had something in common. That one thing was that they didn't want to work together, and they turned that fury onto Sparks, but he wasn't having any of it.

  "Look, enough of the attitude. You don't like it, I get it, and frankly I don't give a damn. You have a job to do, just like I do. Now I am putting you together because I think you might actually be able to achieve something. You're nothing alike. I realise that. That is why I chose you. I want you to feed off one another. Think in ways that the other doesn't. This isn't optional, you get me?"

  They were both lost for words.

  "Look, the President himself has asked me to allocate a team to find and identify what, or who Incognito is."

  "What? Not one agency has been able to find a single clue to that puzzle, and you think the two of us can?"

  "Not really, but whatever we are doing isn't working, so we need some other way. You know in my grandfather's day, agents like us would hit the streets and actually learn a lot. Maybe we rely on our tech too much these days."

  "Incognito certainly does," she replied.

  "Exactly. Whoever this asshole is, he knows how we work and how to get to us. He has intel from a great range of sources, and abilities to manipulate our networks in ways we don't understand. How are we supposed to beat him at his own game?"

  "We don't. We play our own," replied Hud.

  "Exactly. I am putting you two on this case because you are my wild cards. I'll keep the resources we have on this case going, but you two will run independently. When I say that, I mean truly independently. As far as the Agency is concerned, I am hitching you two up because you're both a disaster, and you can be a disaster together, working whatever shit jobs I can find for you."

  "Great cover," joked Hud.

  "It is a great cover, because you're both a mess, and yet you are just the sort of out of the box thinking we need right now. So hit the road. Pound the streets. Go and dig wherever you have to, but find me some answers."

  "Where do we start, Sir?" Nui asked.

  "That's for you to decide. I have cleared you for access to all the files we have. Beyond that, you are on your own. Incognito clearly knows a lot about us, and he has abilities with hacking and data manipulation beyond our comprehension. So stay off the grid with this, and maybe you might be able to achieve what no one else has. Heads have already rolled."

  "Sir?"

  "You haven't heard?" Hud asked.

  She looked confused.

  "The President fired Rice."

  "What? Why?"

  "Because of this whole Incognito thing. It's serious, and it undermines our entire nation. We have thrown massive resources at this already, and we continue to do so, but maybe you two will manage something working outside the rest of us."

  They didn't look particularly happy to be working with one another, but they understood the gravity of the situation and were not going to argue about it.

  "That's it. Get on out of here," said Sparks as he sipped away at his coffee.

  The two of them left. They didn't look comfortable with one another at all.

  "So what now?" Nui asked.

  "We hit the road."

  "What? Why?"

  "Clear the air and have a think about our next steps."

  They didn't speak another word until they reached the parking garage and were approaching an old Dodge Challenger from the 2020s. It was an antique among the sea of electric Fords and Teslas, yet was in such great condition it looked no older.

  "You drive that?" she asked.

  "Damn right, I do."

  "Still with the gas motor?"

  "Of course."

  "That car is probably older than you are."

  "And? You think everything in life gets better as time goes by. Look at all that, bland and boring."

  "They do a job, and do it well."

  "Yeah? Your suit, you buy it because it does a job, or some other reasons?"

  She didn't look impressed, but she got the message as they opened the doors of the old car. Two electric vehicles glided on by, one of them autonomously, with nobody inside.

  "You might want to move with the times, but you need to be careful that they don't move on without you," said Nui.

  He smiled as he got inside. He slipped the key in the ignition, a novel feature for Nui to see. He turned the engine over, and it roared to life, the open exhausts roaring through the peaceful garage. He revved the engine a few times; feeling instantly better as he took delight in the angry growls that caused heads to turn.

  "Incognito is an online presence. He exists out there in the ether. God knows where. We have no idea what country he is in, or how many people are part of the movement. Nothing. We aren't going to find anything by going for a drive."

  "Maybe not, but neither could we talk back there. You heard Sparks," he said as he continued to rev the engine.

  It was clear it was not just for his own pleasure, but also to mask their conversation to the other agents passing them. Nui was impressed and surprised.

  "Sparks made it clear that we do this on our own. No one else is to know what we are up to, so we keep our work out of the office. We only go there to report to Sparks himself, you got that?"

&
nbsp; "But everything we have on Incognito is there, on sealed files only accessible on site," she protested.

  "And how far has that information gotten anyone so far?"

  She shrugged.

  "Nowhere. What we need isn't hidden away in Agency files. It is out there in the real world, and we are going to find it."

  It was clear to her that he wasn't particularly tech savvy, and yet he had a way with words, and understood the situation far better than she had realised. He revved the engine once again, but this time the wheels spun, and they suddenly lurched forward. The tyres squealed, and they left a cloud of smoke in their wake. They rushed up the exit ramp and burst out into the daylight. Hud had a huge grin on his face, as if this was the best part of his day, and she could sort of see why.

  Chapter 4

  Luna Lee's Residence,

  Downtown Portland, OR, United American Nations

  She slumped down onto her sofa and threw her gym bag to the floor. Luna was exhausted. That is what it took to stay in the shape she wanted. All the time she wasn't working, she was either competing or training. She loved it, but it also left her physically and mentally exhausted after every single day. Sunday was her rest day. She would train three hours that day.

  "News," she said.

  A large, solid wall flicked to life. It transitioned into a screen with a news anchor and violent scenes as the man talked about riots in the South. She didn't care to even listen, as it was so far from her it seemed like it had no relevance at all.

  "Next."

  The channel turned to a speech by the President.

  "This madman, this threat to peace in the East must be stopped. Dun is a threat to international peace and security, a loose cannon that must be dealt with. The United American Nations will meet him with whatever force is necessary to ensure the safety of us all..."

  Luna groaned. It was the same old sabre rattling she heard all the time.

  "Give it up and do something, or shut up about it, damn. Next!"

  The channel switched once again to a tech channel called Pinnacle. She smiled, as she often enjoyed what they had to say. They were outlining the latest Hyperloop lines that were increasingly reaching out to remote areas. But it wasn't long before they moved on to the next story, and it gripped her immediately with the opening line.