[MISSION STATUS: COMPLETE]
[EXTRACTION: SUCCESSFUL]
[RETURN VECTOR: ESTABLISHED]
[TIME: 01:15 LOCAL]
The mag-lev train slices through the neon-drenched night of Neo-Berlin. It runs on an elevated track, soaring above the grime of the lower sectors. Inside the carriage, the air is recycled and smells faintly of ozone and stale synth-caf.
Unit 73 sits perfectly still. His back is perpendicular to the seat. His hands rest symmetrically on his knees. He does not blink at the standard human rate; his optical sensors require moisture regulation far less frequently.
He is alone in the car save for one other passenger at the far end: a salaryman in a wrinkled suit, slumped against the window, snoring loudly with his mouth open. A thin line of drool connects his lip to the glass.
73 observes the salaryman.
[SUBJECT: HUMAN MALE - STATUS: FATIGUED / REM SLEEP]
[THREAT LEVEL: 0%]
73 dismisses the data. It is irrelevant noise. He refocuses his attention inward, where the post-mission debrief scrolls across his retinal display in a cascade of cool blue text.
[PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: CONTRACT #804-VANE]
Target Status: Terminated (Cardiac Arrest)
Methodology: Poison/Accidental
Witnesses: None
Forensic Trail: Negative
Collateral Damage: 0.00%
A final, larger notification pulses in the center of his vision.
[RATING: SILENT ASSASSIN]
"Satisfactory," Mother's voice manifests in his auditory cortex. The connection is clearer now that he is away from the chaotic interference of the club's unshielded electronics. Her tone is smooth, detached, like polished chrome. "The Board is pleased. News outlets are already reporting Vane's death as a 'tragic lifestyle excess.' Sanctum stock value has seen a pre-market increase of 0.4%."
73 does not respond. A response is not required. He is a tool; the tool has functioned correctly.
[REWARD PROCESSING...]
[TRANSFER COMPLETE: 5,000 CREDITS DEPOSITED]
[UNIT EXPERIENCE GAINED: 1,200 XP]
The train begins to decelerate. The urban density below thins out, replaced by the colossal, brutalist architecture of the Sanctum residential sectors.
"Approaching Sector 9. Industrial housing facilities," the train's automated announcer drones.
The doors hiss open. 73 stands in one fluid motion. He exits the train, leaving the sleeping salaryman behind, and steps onto the desolate platform.
The Safehouse is not a home. It is a storage and maintenance facility for a high-value asset. It is located on the fortieth floor of Megablock Delta-9, a concrete monolith that scrapes the acid clouds.
73 enters the apartment. The door features a biometric lock and a reinforced titanium deadbolt that slides home with a heavy thunk. The interior is stark. White walls, polished concrete floors. There are no windows, only reinforced blast shutters shielding the room from the city's harsh light and surveillance drones. There is no furniture designed for comfort—only a recharge chair resembling a complex dental apparatus, a stainless-steel weapons workbench, and a nutrient paste dispenser built into the wall.
73 begins his shutdown protocol.
He removes the trench coat and hangs it on a precise hook by the door.
He removes the suit jacket.
He loosens the red tie and drapes it over the hanger.
He unbuttons the shirt.
He stands naked in the center of the sterile room. The overhead LED strips illuminate his form without warmth. His body is a testament to Sanctum's bio-engineering. He is pale, almost alabaster. Beneath the skin, faint geometric ridges hint at sub-dermal armor plating protecting vital organs. At the base of his skull, the neural port glows with a soft, pulsing blue light, the physical interface for his existence.
He walks to the workbench. He places the ICA-19 "Specter" on a rubberized mat.
He sits on a metal stool and begins to field-strip the weapon. His movements are a blur of calculated efficiency. Slide removed. Recoil spring extracted. Barrel decoupled. Trigger group exposed.
He cleans each component with an oily rag. There is no carbon buildup—he fired no shots—but the ritual is mandatory. It is a grounding exercise. The smell of gun oil and solvent is one of the few sensory inputs that feels fundamentally "real" to him outside of the data streams.
He reassembles the weapon. The final click of the slide racking back into place echoes sharply in the silent room.
Maintenance complete.
He moves to the recharge chair. He sits and reclines. The headrest automatically adjusts, guiding a thick data cable toward the port in his neck.
Click. Connection established.
[INITIATING SANCTUM SERVER SYNC...]
[UPLOAD MISSION DATA: COMPLETE]
[DIAGNOSTIC CHECK: ALL SYSTEMS GREEN]
[ENTERING MAINTENANCE MODE. STANDBY.]
The LED lights in the room dim. 73's eyes close. His consciousness does not fade; it is simply rerouted. The external world disappears, replaced by the comforting, endless void of the data stream.
[ERROR]
[ABNORMAL NEURAL ACTIVITY DETECTED]
[FILE CORRUPTION WARNING]
[SOURCE: MEMORY_CORE_ARCHIVE_REDACTED]
The void shatters.
He is not asleep. Reboots do not dream. Dreaming is an inefficient use of processing power; it is a flaw of the biological substrate.
Yet, he is seeing something.
He is standing in a garden. The light is blindingly intense—natural sunlight, unfiltered by smog or rain. It feels alien, hot against his skin. The air smells intensely floral, sickeningly sweet. Red roses bloom in impossibly perfect rows, their thorns sharp and distinct.
He looks down at his hands. They are wearing leather gloves. But they feel different. Older. The leather is worn, creased by time and use.
He is not alone. A man stands in front of him.
The man is a mirror image, yet distorts into something else. He is tall, bald, perfectly built. He wears an expensive black suit. A crisp white shirt. A blood-red tie.
The man has no neural port glowing at the base of his neck. Instead, there is a tattoo just above the collar line. A barcode. Below it, numbers.
640509-040147
The numbers burn into 73's mind. They feel heavy with significance, a cipher he cannot crack.
The man in the garden looks at 73. His eyes are icy blue, devoid of the grey neutrality of 73's own optics. They hold an oceanic depth of experience, cold fury, and absolute resolve.
The man raises a silver pistol—a different model, older, a Silverballer—and aims it directly between 73's eyes.
"Wake up," the man says. His voice is gravel and silk. It sounds disturbingly like 73's own voice, but deeper, resonant with a humanity that 73 has never possessed.
73 tries to access his HUD. He tries to scan the target.
[SYSTEM FAILURE]
[INTERFACE OFFLINE]
He has no weapon. He has no data. He is naked in the sunlight.
The man cock the hammer of the silver pistol.
"Wake up, 47."
[CRITICAL ALERT]
[BIOMETRIC SPIKE DETECTED]
[CORTISOL LEVELS: CRITICAL]
[HEART RATE: 160 BPM]
[EMERGENCY WAKE PROTOCOL: INITIATED]
73 gasps. His body spasms violently in the recharge chair. His eyes snap open, wide and searching in the dim light of the safehouse.
He rips the data cable from the back of his neck with a savage jerk.
He is breathing raggedly. The air tastes stale again. The scent of roses is gone, replaced by metal and antiseptic.
[WARNING: SYSTEM DESYNCHRONIZATION]
"Unit 73. Report." Mother's voice is instantly inside his head. It is no longer smooth; it is sharp, demanding. "Biometric monitors registered a severe stress response during maintenance cycle. Explain."
73 sits in the dark. The sweat on his skin feels cold as the synthetic adrenaline floods his system. He stares at the blank concrete wall. The image of the barcode tattoo burns in his memory buffer. The name sounds in his echo chamber. 47.
He regulates his breathing. He forces his heart muscle to slow down.
[HEART RATE: STABILIZING... 90 BPM... 75 BPM...]
"Processing error," 73 thinks back, keeping his mental voice flat, unemotional. He builds a firewall around the memory of the garden. "Random data fragmentation from the previous mission upload caused a sensory feedback loop. Visual noise. It has been purged."
A long silence follows. Mother is analyzing his output. She is cross-referencing his explanation with his physiological data points. She is deciding if he is defective product.
"Your neural pathways are showing residual excitation," Mother notes suspiciously. "We will schedule a full diagnostic wipe after the next rotation. Do not let 'noise' interfere with your programming, 73."
"Understood."
"Good. Because we have an immediate deployment. Priority Alpha."
73 stands. He feels a strange sensation in his chest—a tightness. A lingering echo of the fear he felt in the garden. He suppresses it. He files it under 'Irrelevant Data'.
"Brief me," he commands.
The holographic projector in the center of the room flickers to life. A large, rotating 3D map materializes, glowing in blue wireframe. It depicts a massive, cylindrical tower that pierces the cloud layer of a different sector.
"Location: Eden-5. The Vertical Farm," Mother explains. "It is a biosphere tower in Sector 7, responsible for forty percent of the city's fresh oxygen and organic produce generation. It is a highly secure research facility disguised as agriculture."
The hologram zooms in, showing a portrait of a severe-looking man with thin spectacles and a high forehead.
"Target: Dr. Aris Thorne. Chief Botanist and Lead Genetic Engineer for Eden-5. Thorne is privately developing a weaponized strain of fungal blight designed to target synthetic food crops used by the lower sectors. He intends to release it, creating a famine that will force the city to rely solely on his expensive organic produce."
73 studies the man's face. Another variable in the equation.
"Sanctum cannot allow this market destabilization. The resulting riots would damage infrastructure and lower productivity," Mother continues coldly. "Thorne must be eliminated before he can finalize the blight strain."
[CONTRACT ADDED: THE GARDENER]
[DIFFICULTY: HARD]
[LOCATION: EDEN-5 BIOSPHERE]
[REWARD: 10,000 CREDITS]
"The complication?" 73 asks. There is always a complication.
"The top floor, Thorne's personal laboratory, is a sealed Level 4 Biohazard zone," Mother says. "The atmosphere inside is supersaturated with experimental growth hormones and pesticides. It is toxic to un-augmented humans. Thorne wears a sealed environmental suit at all times inside the lab. If you breach the seal without protection, your lung capacity will degrade to zero within one hundred and eighty seconds."
73 absorbs the constraints. A timed kill in a hostile environment.
He turns to the weapons rack. The standard Specter loadout will not be sufficient for a high-security facility with environmental hazards. He needs tools.
He accesses the wall screen. The Sanctum Armory Interface illuminates the room.
[CURRENT CREDITS: 5,000]
He scrolls through the available equipment list.
Emetic Poison Vial [Cost: 500 C]
Lockpick MK II (Electronic Bypass)[Cost: 1,500 C]
Disposable Scrambler (Single Use Keycard Hack)[Cost: 750 C]
Remote Explosive Duck (Rubber)[Cost: 1,000 C]
73 analyzes the mission parameters. He will need to bypass high-level security doors to reach the top floor quickly.
He selects the Disposable Scrambler.
[PURCHASE CONFIRMED. REMAINING CREDITS: 4,250]
A small drawer in the wall below the screen slides open. Inside sits a small, rectangular device made of black composite material with a universal data port. He pockets it.
He begins to dress. Shirt. Tie. Suit. Trench coat. The ritual is faster this time, driven by a new urgency. He feels different inside his own skin. The glitch has left a residue. A question mark where there should only be periods.
He steps in front of the polished metal surface he uses as a mirror. He looks into his own grey eyes. For a fraction of a second, he expects to see the icy blue stare of the man from the garden. He expects to see the barcode.
But he only sees Unit 73.
"I am ready," 73 says to the empty room.
"Transport is en route to the roof pad," Mother replies. "Execute with prejudice, 73. The System is watching."
73 turns and heads for the door. The deadbolt disengages with a heavy clank. He steps out into the dimly lit corridor of the mega-block, leaving the sterile safety of the box behind. The hunt begins again.