It all felt like a day off, as the drive there only took about fifteen minutes or so. Apparently, some demon was wreaking havoc at some public park. Andrew didn’t fully get the appeal of artificial trees, or at least ones that definitely weren’t native to an artificial island, but to each their own.
Fortunately, thanks to local police, all the civilians were evacuated before any significant casualties. Well, almost all casualties. “A… large man in a button-shirt and glasses tripped on his way out,” Lieutenant Bates relayed. “Not my call, but someone higher declared his scraped knee as a casualty.”
Singh laughed uncontrollably. “They what?!” She almost choked on her nicotine, before Gutierrez slapped her on the back.
“Hey! Have some sympathy for the pendejo,” he said. “Maybe it’s a family guy you’re disrespecting.”
The truck parked right outside the police line and, as usual, they walked out in their APEs. “Looks like we’re dealing with a minor-level threat,” the Sergeant relayed. “I want to surround him. Singh and Gutierrez, you’re fireteam one. Smith and Kang, fireteam two. Cheng and I will be fireteam three.”
“Good to go, Sar’nt.”
Teams one and two took the alleyways as chokepoints. Since this demon wasn’t boxed in, like in the garden or the tunnel, it was good procedure to close off potential exits. “Cheng, you know how to use the wire?”
“I have it right here, Sergeant.”
Andrew held the wiregun on his belt. It looked more like a net-gun, since it was supposed to fire something fast enough to wrap around a demon with a painful sting—not to mention the rigging with thermite. “Would you want me to use it on sight, Sergeant?”
“No, that’d be too risky,” she replied. “As much as I’d like to turn this whole street into a warzone, we have to play by the rules of escalation. If we can capture this demon when it’s weak, and spare the thermite, then we’ll be good to go.”
Everyone got into position and gave a quick confirmation on comms. “This is fireteam one, we’re set,” Singh relayed.
“Fireteam two, we’re set.”
“Rah,” the Sergeant replied. “Fireteam three moving in.”
The two of them moved in with their weapons at opposing angles. Sergeant Yang held the right while Andrew held the left. Despite the Sergeant’s recent surgery, Andrew had no doubt in her abilities. They were going to make it out of here alive.
Then it happened fast.
“Found our target,” the Sergeant called. Before Andrew could even see what was going on, he heard the sound of metal pulverizing flesh. By the time he turned his head, he found the demon—it looked like a man with a deer’s head—crumpled on the ground.
The demon shrieked. It scampered onto its feet, like the animal it was. Andrew didn’t even have time to aim his gun, not to mention the accuracy to avoid hitting the Sergeant. But it didn’t seem to matter.
The Sergeant slipped under a swing and countered with a right hook to the ribs. Before the beast could even register the punch, she finished it with a monstrous hook for the head. Blood spewed. The demon’s jaw flung off.
“Fire when ready,” the Sergeant ordered as she walked off. Andrew only waited a second before he fired the wire-gun.
It was like some scene from an action movie, where the main character turns their back against an explosion. Well, in this case, it was an electric line that shocked a battered demon into pure submission. “Team, this is Sergeant Yang. We have the demon in custody.”
“Already?” Singh cackled.
“Shit, Sar’nt,” Gutierrez chuckled. “You could’ve at least waited for us.”
***
That was probably the easiest mission Andrew had ever done. Funnily enough, prior to his arrival, that was the usual standard. “Most demons would be walks in the park,” Smith explained. “Sometimes, we’d get false alarms. Some granny would think that a rat was a demon. I had to explain to her that the vermin had jumped boats to get to New Changan, but she refused to listen.”
“So how’d you guys solve it?” Andrew asked.
“We didn’t; the Sergeant did. She stomped on that little rat like it owed her money. Long story short, the granny thanked her for ‘killing the demon’ and, every once in a while, sends us a batch of Russian cookies.”
Just then, the Sergeant passed by with a tray of said cookies. “They’re called tea cakes, not cookies,” she seamlessly added. “Cheng, try one. We only get one batch a month.”
“Why aren’t you a hero,” Andrew chuckled. The cookies were the crumbly kind that could crumble under the simple pressure of sitting in someone’s hand. Even as Andrew picked one up, he could feel its fragile batter sit like baby powder—tasty looking baby powder, at least.
He took a bite. It tasted sweet.
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“Good, now you have energy,” the Sergeant said. “I need you and Smith to tweak the suits. Don’t think that I didn’t hear how you slacked off at the hospital.” She gave that usual smirk that she always gave. Maybe he was on her good side now.
They were back on the usual system: three pairs with one awake, and the other two on standby. Singh and Gutierrez went to bed, Kang and the Sergeant went to get food, and Smith and Andrew went to repair the suits. Only a few hours of this, then Andrew could get some rest.
“Alright,” Smith began. He loaded up his APE onto a stationary forklift. From here, it looked less like a suit of armor and more like a car at the chop-shop. “So what did they teach you at tech school?”
Andrew chuckled. “Are you seriously asking me if I’m a complete rookie at this?”
“Yes,” he smugly replied. “You’re reliable in the field; you’ve saved our ass and I’ve saved yours. But that doesn’t mean you’re a good mechanic. A good gun doesn’t exactly make a good hammer.”
Shit, Andrew couldn’t argue with that. And, in all honesty, tech school was a blur by now. If he wanted to remember it, he had to wade through memories of bodies, demons, gunpowder, and the annoying paperwork that came with it. The technical stuff was at the bottom of his mind.
Fortunately, Smith took Andrew’s silence as an answer. “Fine… just watch whatever I do.”
It was like watching a barber in his motion. Smith opened up his APE like a chef with an oyster. “This is the stuff I’ve been doing for you. Cleaning the suit is the easy part, which you probably learned as soon as you got into one of these sweaty things. The hard part is actually fixing some of the parts.”
He opened a hatch at the rear plates. It made a quick hiss before revealing a massive battery. It was like a car battery, but flatter and more plate-like. “These batteries are supposed to last ten years with consistent charging and good care. Too bad the idiots at the lab forgot that we work like animals. I’ll use 5-percent in one mission and 95-percent in the next.”
Smith moved wires here and there. He made sure to go slow, which was still fast, by Andrew’s standards. “I also overclock mine, so I trick it into giving me extra juice if I need it. Sure, it degrades the battery by a good amount, but I’d rather stay alive a little longer. It legitimately saved my life.”
The more Andrew looked around, the more he was in awe. Some parts were reinforced better than others, while there also seemed to be further modifications here and there. “Those speakers,” Andrew pointed. “Are those the ones connected to the comms?”
“Damn straight, they are.” Smith looked proud of his work. “I put some top-tier speakers on here, since the old ones are pieces of shit. Well, most of the standard equipment is shit. The only reason why you don’t notice it is because I had tweaked Wade’s suit a while back.” He quickly gestured a cross. “Rest in peace, brother.”
“How’d you get so good with this stuff?” Andrew asked. “College?”
“Fuck no,” he snickered. “During college though, I’d say yes. Curriculum got me a good introduction into electrical engineering, but me and my frat homies would tinker with shit for kicks. You’d be surprised; frats can be full of nerds.”
Smith went on as he unplugged components and replaced them with newer ones. “It starts with trying to modify calculators, then cars, and then an APE. At least when you find out that companies don’t have any use for lazy engineers who slept in class, drank afterwards, and then used chatbots for homework.”
He worked on each member’s APE for them, including Singh’s. Andrew could even see her signature dip straw that let her spit out any fluid from her mouth. “At least she cleans it out after every mission,” Smith scoffed. “It’s thanks to my bitch-work, that people don’t mind my awful amount of realism.”
“Cynicism?” Andrew asked.
“No, I said what I said.” Smith fixed a broken wire. “The biggest weakness of any group is a dumbass who thinks that grit and magic can fix everything. Sure, it can squeeze a bit more sweat. But we’ll need more than just sweat to get a machine moving,” he said. “Frankly, that’s why I like this team so much. The most we get is matter-of-fact motivation.”
“And Park’s hidden bombs,” Andrew joked.
Smith chuckled. At least he found it funny. “Yeah, and her bombs,” he laughed. “It’s a shame she’s like that. We met each other way back in boot camp. You know, a boot-camp boo. But we ended up still hanging out when we got stationed here in New Changan. While I was good with the technical stuff, she was good at combat. Kind of like you and the Sergeant, but with a more homicidal tendency.
“Anyway,” he continued as he worked with another APE, “she was absolutely gorgeous. For reference, my ass is from Michigan; the most I got was some White girl from the ‘burbs who thought her hairline was cute. But Park? Well, as part of her name, she blew them right out the damn ballpark.”
“She sounds nice.”
“Oh, nice is definitely not the right word. She was a crazy bitch, through and through. Saw a girl pop up on my social media? Pissed. Notice a lady looking at me in public? Pissed. Hell, if she had a dream that I cheated on her, she’d be pissed. But, I guess I stayed for the long-game and…” He looked around to make sure the Sergeant wasn’t prowling around. “That immaculate sex…”
The two of them shared the same chuckle that high-school boys would have in a basketball locker room. “What was the problem then?” Andrew asked. “She sounds crazy, but you seemed to be fine with it.”
“Well…” Smith tsked. “By long game, we were thinking of getting married. People in these lines of work love getting married at relatively young ages, and I wasn’t really thinking with my head. Well, not the one that rests on my shoulders, at least.”
Smith took a quick break from his work to think. “I… I think I had my reservations after I saw Wade die,” he said. “I’ve seen CDR members get maimed, sent home, and a couple of them killed. But for some reason, Wade hit in another way. It was like watching him die shattered that young invincibility that every kid has. You just realize, shit, I could die.”
Andrew paused with him. The talk had suddenly gotten serious as soon as Andrew felt that weight of responsibility creep back to his shoulders. “So you broke up with her, because you feared death?”
“I…” Smith took a deep breath. “I think I just had a second where everything turned real, and I realized what was happening in my life. I couldn’t just be satisfied with pretty looks, nice sex, and attachment issues. Maybe I would’ve found happiness with her; maybe not. Even with my current relationship, I’m not sure if that’s the case, but… I’m working on it.”
“Yeah. That’s rough,” Andrew could only say. He patted his teammate on the back. Being in a relationship while being a CDR member was like being a living ghost—the two things could never align. “Just make sure you don’t wake up to another rotten fish.”
Smith snickered. “Fuck off…”