“We have confidence in you.” Rafik leaned forward. “And this time you will have information and equipment. There are files on Mannes we managed to extract after the Catastrophe. You should view them as well, once you are transferred to the bunker.”
“Transferred where?”
“We will send you back to the physical world. The bunker you will wake up in is still well supplied. You will have all that you need on your mission.”
“Back from the dead for one final mission,” I said wryly. “Sounds like one of the Salvo-novels I used to read when I was young and stupid. What if I refuse to go?”
Rafik waited a little before answering. “You would go back to sleep. We cannot spend the energy to keep you self-aware. But if you bring us Emilija, you’ll have a world to be a God in.”
This time I took my time before asking, “Where’s the stick?”
“The what?”
I stared him down. “You dangled a very ripe, juicy carrot in front of my eyes, but what happens if I fail this insane mission, or what stops me from forgetting the whole thing and staying in the physical world? Where’s the stick? There’s always a rusting stick.”
“Your bodies will begin to decay in less than three years.” Rafik locked eyes with me. “It is a relatively quick but nevertheless unpleasant experience.”
“Here’s the stick,” I said quietly. Then added, “You said ‘bodies’?”
“You won’t be sent on such a dangerous mission on your own.”
“Ah, planning an armed, Troll escort team to accompany me?”
“‘Escort,’ yes. ‘Team,’ that depends on your point of view.” My guess was that Rafik knew he’d broken me and was now simply enjoying himself.
“Who do you have in mind?”
Rafik told me, and for the first time since I came back to life, I smiled.
Peach
Initializing.
Date and time are not known.
Reporting full physical functions and health.
No specific orders embedded in my surface memory.
Vessel is of a middle-aged woman showing Asian heritage, dark skinned. Height and weight under average for women in this hemisphere.
Vessel has been grown for reconnaissance and infiltration, not combat. Normal physical limitations and only basic damage resistance. Pain dumpers fully functioning, and standard combat capabilities and reflexes. ESM active.
No internal equipment is detected. For security reasons, I will not use external equipment to contact headquarters.
The sterilized compartment contains basic gear, light clothing, nourishment pills, rapid hair growth salve, and such, but no weapons or other equipment. Therefore I conclude this is an emergency bunker and not a normal operation-level hub.
Initiating silent mode, dictating events into the organic internal drive. I will continue to do so until I run out of space or find an opportunity to upload.
The bunker is running on a minimum power level. I have detected a second vessel, a female combat breed, but it has sustained some kind of damage or malfunction and is ruined beyond repair. Perhaps this is why I have awoken in this vessel.
Since my orders are unclear and the bunker is in some sort of malfunction, I am initiating survival code Alpha.
Switching to personal, internal briefing.
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my eyes. It wasn’t just the physical state of the place—I’ve woken up in worse conditions—or the fact that my vessel was a middle-aged Asian female. From a muscle-ripped warrior to a nine-year-old child, I’d occupied all kinds of vessels on my past missions. Yet this time, something bothered me on a more fundamental level.
I knew who I was and I knew my assignment. I was to locate and find a young woman, Emilija, and bring her safe and sound to a rendezvous point—but that was it. No details on the girl—not even what she looked like—no threat assessments, no extract team, not even the exact location I was supposed to bring the girl to, only that she should not be harmed and that I should head to Tarkania, the City of Towers. I can’t say this scared me—I’ve been through too much to become unhinged by the absence of ideal circumstances—but I took note of the fact that headquarters was not responding; this was not a usual situation. At least the mission was a simple “find and retrieve,” not an assassination or my specialty, mass sabotage. I wondered who the girl was. She seemed to be important enough for command to deploy someone of my rank and status.
I also had an overwhelming, inexplicable desire for a peach. This, too, was not out of the ordinary for a hibernating agent. Sometimes during the transition into the new vessel some odd quirks would take hold. You might wake up hating milk, or wanting to wear clothes in the colour of blue or, like me right now, dying for a peach. It was not a big deal, but this sort of thing usually happened when the hibernating agent was shelved for a long period of time, more than a month or two, for sure.
There were too many unanswered questions, too many variables, and with all signals from the outside world blocked I could not see what was waiting for me outside, or even where I was on the globe.
There was just enough air being recycled in the small bunker, but it was not of the best quality. It made me queasy, and so the first order of the day was to get out of the place. It proved to be more of a problem than I expected; I soon found the exit tunnel had collapsed and my way was blocked by debris. I had to improvise some tools and work several hours to clear the tunnel, sustaining some minor damage—mainly bruises and cuts.
When I eventually managed to reach the sealed door, I had to manually unlock it, brace against the wall, and push away a heavy slab of concrete that lay on top of the door. This was a good thing as it meant no hostile welcoming committee was waiting for me outside, yet I found out soon enough how dire my situation really was.
At first I thought I’d emerged on a wooded hillside of some sort. I climbed up to a vantage point, a slab of broken concrete laden with rich moss, and began slowly surveying the premises, concentrating on each tiny detail and trying to piece them into a bigger picture. It was a vast, unrecognisable city that had sustained heavy damage of catastrophic proportions. I’d seen a lot during my course of duty, but this took some time to sink in.
With the exception of several small animals—birds and squirrels, mainly—there was no indication of any living beings. My body detected residue of nuclear waste still lingering in the air, but not at a health-threatening level so long as I left the contaminated area in a week’s time. Assuming there was cleaner air elsewhere.
Despite the destruction, or maybe because of it, nature was slowly claiming back the land. In fact, only the most elevated parts, which could be seen in the distance, were not covered with thick foliage. By the condition of the ruins and the fauna I guessed this city had been in a ruined state for a long time and there were no visible efforts of recovery, which ruled out an accident or natural disaster. Yet if a large city remained levelled for so long, it was a sure sign of a larger conflict, perhaps a destroyed civilisation. I just had to figure out which one. At least I knew that since I was awake, my side still existed.
I had to admit that despite the utter shock at what I was seeing and its implications, having had my predictions—filed in numerous postassignment reports—come true gave me the tiniest spark of professional pride. I’d seen it coming, I really had. Over the course of two decades, my assignments had gone from subtle