Enjoy.

Even the air under the open sky was full of noise. Alisa walked across the compound, almost strolling, and hummed quietly to the music playing in her head. It had been a long time since she could see the sky without the edges of buildings included in her vision. Red text, bold and angular, flashed across her vision “Alisa, listen to your COM!” Refocusing her hearing to ignore the radio waves she had been listening to Alisa caught yells trying to get her attention.

“Damn it, Cat, pay attention!” Lucien’s voice roared across their COM signal. “Yeah, yeah… I’m almost there. Everything is going smoothly, relax,” Alisa responded stifling a yawn.

“That worked. Thanks, ‘Wise,” Lucien thanked the hacker for getting Alisa’s attention. “Nothing to it,” BitWise’s voice floated across the COM.

“Cat, where are you now? You should report in more often.” Lucien always had to be up to date. Normally BitWise could watch via the installations cameras but not this time so Lucien was on edge.

“Last door,” Alias responded, “stop worrying so much.”

“You sure you can get this one?”

“Yeah, sure. I’m not great with elec’ locks but I’m no pushover. And I’m chipped too,” Alisa waved away such concerns, “I haven’t slipped up yet and I’m not gonna start.”

“You can’t always land on your feet, Cat,” Lucien grumbled at Alisa’s happy go lucky attitude. “There’s nothing to protect you out there. ‘Almost wish there was more metal in you.”

Alisa looked over the lock to the outer door and found it to be a fairly simple electronic lock. Opening her right hand revealed a small tool to override the lock. It might not work and she might have to use less subtle means to open it but she couldn’t carry anything better. Running around in nothing but your skin to be mostly-invisible had its downsides. Chameleon skin didn’t let you carry a bag of tools because a floating bag would be pretty suspicious. So she had to make do with things small enough to palm. Mentally crossing her fingers, Alisa activated the tool and sighed in relief when the lock clicked open.

“I’m through and I’ll be done in a minute,” she reported once she had slipped inside and closed the door. Quickly searching a couple rooms revealed exactly what they had expected, several computer workstations. Alisa opened her left hand to reveal a tiny wireless transmitter which she attached to one of the computers to connect it, and the rest of the network, to the ‘net.

“’Wise, you’re up,” Alisa informed him as she turned and began to make her way out of the complex.

“I’m already in the system,” Bitwise said distractedly, “Basic security is already off.”

Alisa worked her way steadily across the compound.

“What the… ,” Bitwise’s confusion was apparent even before he finished the sentence, “the data is a fake.”

Lucien’s shouts across the COM were mingled with the sudden blaring of alarms, “We’ve been set up! Get out of there, Cat!”

Alisa was already near the outer wall surrounding the compound. About to pass the corner of one of the buildings, she stopped and flowed into a backflip before she even noticed the EMP grenade flying through the air. Her foot kicked it away and she was already tumbling to the side when it detonated. She found herself caught in the edge of its effects and her senses shut down with a flash of white silence. When her vision snapped back in again she realized she was already running headlong for the compound’s outer wall. Sound came crashing in around her along with an intense headache. The sound of guns being fired and bullets embedding in the ground all around her let her know her chameleon skin had shorted and she was quite visible.

Extending her cyberclaws, she leaped at the wall. Capable of cutting at a molecular level, each claw bit into the wall. Ignoring the electric shocks from the compounds security system, Alisa continued to scramble up the wall.

“Some help here!?,” she yelled through her teeth into her COM.

“It’s already there,” Lucien informed her, almost smugly.

He had switched to an xray vision mode and tossed several flash and stun grenades over the wall and across the compound. The gun fire turned erratic after they went off. Most of the compounds guards and mercs’ were either blinded or confused as to where other enemies might be coming from.

Lucien watched as Alisa reached the top of the wall about to drop safely down the other side. He saw the look on her face with his magnified vision when several shots ripped through her left side and arm, a look of shock. He knew she was unconscious before she even hit the ground.

She had only been there a moment when Lucien reached her, one of the benefits of cyberlegs were that they were fast, really fast. He picked her up with his left arm and glared angrily through the wall at the coalescing group of guards. His right arm was up, and leveled at the guards, bold red text flashing across his vision along with distance estimates and velocities “Executing program CAINE_CN. . .”, before he realized he what he was doing. He braced himself as his arm converted into the powerful weapon it was designed to be. An audible whirring sound began, rising in pitch to into a shriek of bottled power, caged electricity.

“Die, you bastards,” Lucien growled and sent the trigger signal.

Strained energy poured into a single shot that tore through the wall, the group of guards, and the building behind them breaking apart the molecules of everything it touched. The guards couldn’t even scream. The sound of air rushing to fill the void left by the shot’s path dimly reached Lucien. He turned and rushed back to the van where he had been waiting, ignoring the red, flashing ‘low battery’ floating in his vision.

Lucien carefully set Alisa down in the van and grabbed a rocket launcher from the nearby rack of weapons. Checking that the rocket was guided, he scanned through vision modes looking for something to take care of the complex. Hitting a light spectrum Alisa normally used to mark strategic points for their team, he noticed a tank on the far end of the compound painted so brightly it screamed for attention. An easy target since it was shining so brightly in his altered vision.

“Priest, get us to a medic,” Lucien ordered the driver over the sound of the ensuing explosions.

“Got it, boss,” Priest calmly tossed his cigarette out the window and started the van, happy enough to leave a scene without bullets rattling off the armor plated van. They were in motion before it even hit the ground. The harsh lights from the compound’s burning buildings quickly faded into the faded gray of concrete and shadow.

“ ‘Wise? ‘Wise? You there?” Lucien’s voice echoed across the COM for several moments.

“Yeah… I’m here,” Bitwise’s voice across the COM was more real than anyone had ever heard it.

“Find out why we were set up and everyone involved,” Lucien’s tone left no room for questions.

“Right after I get a new ‘deck,” Bitwise sounded almost sad, “There was some pretty nasty black ICE. It was either me or it.”