Equestrian Alliance: Project Oblivion

The bomb caught the convoy halfway down the city's main road, flinging vehicles upwards towards the night sky atop a hellish pyre of flame and debris. The shock wave knocked down lamp posts and echoed off buildings, creating a wave of shattered glass and twisted metal.

"Looks like they took the bait," Chris said into his headset as he shut off the remote control tablet he had been driving the convoy with. From his position on the low roof of a nearby comic book store, he scanned the dark street with his ARHUD glasses in low-light image enhancing mode, registering motion about a seventy five feet ahead and to the right. He zoomed in and saw a man with a rocket launcher leaning out of a second story window. Bringing his rifle up to his shoulder, he placed the red dot directly over the man's head and pulled the trigger. At the same moment, an explosion several streets away caused him to flinch. His bullets pinged off the brickwork near the man with the launcher, who swung in his direction.

"Damn it." Chris quickly re-sighted and fired again, catching the man in the neck. Blood fountained up as the man fell backwards into the room, clutching his throat. The red word “GRENADE” flashed across Chris's vision as the ARHUD interface highlighted a small metal sphere flying through the air towards him from another location. Almost without thinking Chris crouched and sprang off the roof towards the thrower, the flex-metal muscles of his exoskeleton suit flinging him through the air in a graceful arc. At the apex of his trajectory, he aimed his carbine and sent a controlled pulse of bullets ripping through the terrorist.

“Two targets neutralized.”

Gravel crunched and metal pinged as Chris landed heavily on his alloy-clad feet, the grenade exploding on the roof behind him in a shock-wave of fire and debris.

The sound of a revving engine followed almost immediately, and Chris jumped again, up and over the roof of a car as it attempted to run him over. He landed roughly on the asphalt, sparks erupting from his metal exo as he slid several feet. He quickly swung around and brought his rifle to bear, squeezing the trigger and aiming through the rear window into the driver's seat. The bullets stitched through the thin metal of the roof and the car suddenly veered off course. It weaved wildly and accelerated, then slammed into the side of a building, the engine coughing to a stop. Chris reloaded and sprinted up to verify the status of the operators. He approached the tail of the car and crept up the passenger side, weapon at the ready. He could see through the window that the driver was unmoving, his arm hanging out the window at an unnatural angle and dripping blood onto the street. The passenger shifted as he approached, attempting to swivel towards him. Without hesitation Chris fired again, knocking the passenger sideways in a mist of blood. The rifle he had been struggling with thumped onto the floor.

Chris regarded the dead men coldly and spoke into his headset. “Enemy vehicle disabled. Two targets neutralized.”

A large echoing explosion sounded from farther away, followed by silence.

His comlink came alive again, Sanchez's voice coming through in low tones. “Two additional targets eliminated, vehicle destroyed. Anyone got a bead on the other tangoes?"

A burst of distant gunfire drifted on the night air.

"They're down," McAllister responded. "Walked right into me. Never knew what hit 'em."

“This is Command. Numbers match, verify identities of deceased, hand over to local jurisdiction. Tag ‘em and let the cops bag em.”

“Acknowledged.” Staying alert, Chris unclipped the DNA scanner from his pack and pushed it against the terrorist, holding it in position until it glowed green. He repeated the procedure with the driver and, after a short walk, the grenade chucker as well. “DNA prints uploaded. Ready for extraction.”

Why hasn't this terminated yet?

Chris waited uncomfortably in the street, scanning the night for any further activity. As he looked around, a shot rang out from the rooftop across the way. Pitching forward, Chris reflexively reached up to hold the tattered remains of his throat together. On the roof, a circus clown holding a giant cartoonish sniper rifle hooted and jeered. His oversize red shoes made honking and farting noises as he danced a jig in glee.

“Very funny, guys,” Chris's ghost said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head as he stood over his own dying self.
Chris's body sank to the ground, the breath gurgling weakly out of his torn neck, his eyes going glassy as he fell face forward into a pool of his own blood. He twitched once more, then lay still in the dust and smoke. On the roof, circus calliope music played gaily and the clown pointed merrily, dancing and laughing as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.

"Oh you guys are just freakin' hilarious."

***

The town faded to black, the clown's mocking voice hissed into static. Then the words “FATALITIES 1, MISSION SUCCESS. SIMULATION TERMINATED”. blinked across his vision while the warehouse lights came on. Chris reached up and pulled the virtual reality goggles off his face and scratched his ear, turning to the sound of chattering voices. Hamilton, McAllister, and Sanchez walked up to him.

Chris snorted. “I love the little surprise you added just for me.”

"Hey man, just trying to keep things interesting," Clarence McAllister chuckled. "You shoulda seen the look on your face when you got bodied out of nowhere by that clown. Priceless!" His friends knew better than to call him Clarence. He was huge joker, but he hated his first name, and did not take kindly to those foolish enough to use it on him.

Chris laughed. "Yeah I'll admit, that was the last thing I expected to happen."

"If you expected it, that would have ruined the surprise." Miguel Sanchez added. Nobody called him Miguel. As far back as anyone could remember, he had always been just Sanchez. It felt uncomfortable to call him by his first name now.

"I didn't see a single bad guy the entire time, I feel cheated," David Hamilton complained. "I just sat there and listened to you jokers have all the fun." Like McAllister, he was not overly fond of his first name, although he would tolerate being called "Dave" by special people, or on special occasions.

"Hey, you win some, you lose some. The program doesn't follow the exact same path every time you know," Christopher Lance said dismissively. Unlike the others, he preferred to be called "Chris." It seemed odd at first for the squad leader to be the only one called by his first name, but it reminded him that he was no longer in the military. It was a powerful feeling to be in charge of his own life, and one he never tired of.

Together they headed across the warehouse, past the featureless facades of buildings, and into the locker room.

"You gain some weight?" McAllister asked, slapping at Sanchez with a towel.

"No, you goon, I get plenty of exercise just making sure you don't stick your finger in a wall socket or put your head in a plastic bag."

They returned their virtual reality gear to the wall cabinets, then pulled their duty weapons from the biometrically sealed lockers and put them on.

"Man, I can't believe we get paid to do this," Chris chuckled, sliding his Glock into a drop-down leg holster.

"For real. Except sometimes it can get pretty rough just sitting around waiting for something to happen. When's the last time we actually had to respond to a real security incident?" Hamilton said.

They all thought about it. "Uh, there was that one woman who claimed to be The Goddess Reincarnated and showed up naked at the front gate waving a dildo and demanding the subservience of all males," Sanchez finally suggested.

"Yeah, well, she WAS a liberal arts major. And she left quickly after we told her the police would lock her up in a place where she couldn't log onto Tumblr," Hamilton replied.

They stood around quietly for a few more moments.

"Well, can't complain. We get a damn good paycheck, it's actually a pretty quiet job, and we get to train in the simulator as much as we want," McAllister said after the silence had stretched on for more than enough time. "But sometimes, I do wish we could have a little excitement."

Just then, Chris received a text message.

• Jeffrey Peterson: Hey, Chris. Come to my office ASAP, will you? Bring the team. I need to discuss something with all of you.
  
• Christopher Lance: Roger that. On the way.

He looked up at the others. "Hold that thought, guys. The boss wants to talk to us, right now."

***

Chris and his team stood in Jeff's office, having stopped only to ditch their exo suits.

"Thank you for coming, gentlemen."

Jeffrey Peterson was the original founder and owner of Protean Cybernetics Corporation. Years ago in the military, he had been Chris's commander during a deployment. They had struck it off hesitantly, in the reserved and uncomfortable fashion that colors friendship between officers and enlisted. But years later, when he had reached out to Chris with a job offer in the civilian sector, Chris had agreed eagerly. Since then, ProteC had grown into the world's premiere producer of advanced limb and organ replacement technologies, worth many billions of dollars. Jeff was now one of the richest men on the planet.

He leaned back in his chair comfortably. "I got these chairs in here for a reason guys, go ahead and sit down, all this standing is making me weirded out."

"Thank you, sir," Chris said. They sat down in the soft leather chairs.

"I know you're all wondering why I brought you here. Well, the truth is, I have a lot of security personnel on this installation and others, many of them veterans who held Top Secret clearances with the U.S. Government in the past. However, I like your guts, Chris."

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Your attitude. You want to see new things. You want to go places beyond the realm of a tidy paycheck twice a month and a house in the suburbs. You all do."

He leaned abruptly forward on his desk, grinning and steepling his fingers. "So what do you say?"

Chris looked at Jeff in confusion. "I don't... what?"

"Quit being so dense. Do you guys wanna have a good fucking time?"

"I guess that depends on what your definition of a good time is?"

Jeff chuckled. "When you gather up some of the world's best quantum physicists, engineers, mathematicians, doctors, and more, then offer them a blank check to chase their dreams, well, things happen. Oftentimes useless things, sometimes weird things. But once in awhile something amazing happens. Something that changes all the rules. And I am offering you four a chance to be a part of this one."

McAllister couldn't keep quiet any longer. "Are you wanting to do some kind of medical experiments on us? Use us for guinea pigs?"

Jeff stared at him, then leaned back and laughed heartily. "Ha! No! I want to take you guys with me to be my lead security team at a semi-secret overseas location. The man formerly in charge had unexpected family issues, and he has since departed that location for an easier job here in the States. Seriously, I think you guys will like it, and since none of you has a family to deal with, there's nothing to worry about."

Chris looked at his three teammates, and saw three massive grins. "When do we begin, sir?"

Jeff smiled broadly. "Excellent then! I need you all to sign here." He slid a four sheets of paper towards them.

"What is this?" Chris asked, reading it over.

"Standard nondisclosure agreement. What I am about to share with you is highly sensitive. I need your agreement not to repeat it to anyone without clearance before we can continue this conversation."

Chris shrugged and scrawled his signature. Together they slid the four sheets back across the massive desk to Jeff, who whisked them away into a drawer.

"Thank you. Now I can tell you the real fun."

Jeff swept his hand over the desk, and a small gyroscopic device lifted into the air above it, spinning with a soft humming noise. "I've just enabled a privacy field. It should disrupt any electronic monitoring devices as well as shield our voices until I switch it off."

Chris and the others looked at each other, but didn't say anything.

Jeff smiled from behind his desk. "As you are no doubt aware, ProteC has grown into one of the largest businesses in the world, and as such, has branched into areas of science that reach far wider than medical technology."

He cracked his knuckles.

"And now, one of the most advanced and ambitious projects ever created by humans is nearing completion."

"You have a starship?" Hamilton asked.

Jeff frowned. "No, that would be really cool, but no. And now you've kind of ruined my pitch, because what we have isn't as cool as that. All we have is a teleporter."

Hamilton stared for a moment, then smirked. "Ha, good one. You had me for a second there."

"I'm serious. We are building a large teleportation gate. And we will be testing it very soon."

"You're serious. He's serious." Hamilton fell back limply in his chair. "Serious."

Jeff sat back, staring with satisfaction at four open mouths. "Ya'll look funny as hell all slack jawed like that. Welcome to Project Oblivion. We're flying out tomorrow. Bag your shit up and see you at zero six hundred hours on the airstrip. Don't worry, I've got another squad ready to take your place here. Oh, and bring some shorts and stuff. It's a jungle out there. Literally. We're headed to a research installation in Ecuador that's been working on this project for some years now." Jeff rubbed his hands together. "It's gonna be a blast, just you guys wait!"

McAllister found his voice. "Oh hell no. You want me to go through some damn transporter machine? I saw The Fly, I know how this works!"

Jeff gaped for a moment, then laughed. "Not at all, I just want you guys there literally to provide security and make sure nobody pulls some crap. No human is going through for a long time yet. There's a lot of testing to be done before we determine whether that is even safe or not."

"Oh. Well that's different then," McAllister said, relieved.

"Oh and, no talking about this outside of a secured area," Jeff added. "I'd rather not have to fight off every idiot or greedy lunatic who wants to get their hands on this equipment."