Rath's Deception (The Janus Group Book 1) Page 8

“None – just your fist,” Rath replied.

  “Good. Okay, those are your basic visual functions – though you should know that both eyes have the capability of changing iris colors, green, brown, blue, etc. You can also mimic other people’s retinal pattern if you need to, in order to gain access to an area with biometric locks, for instance. Your cybernetic eyes and ears are also permanently recording sights and sounds, which you can replay if necessary. So everything you see and hear is stored in your internal databank, and you can access it later on, if needed. Kind of like having photographic memory.”

  Rath eyed the doctor suspiciously.

  “Do you have photographic memory?” the doctor asked.

  “No,” Rath lied.

  “Well you do now. Recording capabilities aren’t turned on until you’re off the island, though - for security reasons. You’ll notice that your eyes are displaying data – you basically have a miniaturized computer in there now, so you can run search queries, or view maps, or review your mission intelligence packet, all within the heads-up display. I’m told there are some weapons targeting aspects to the heads-up display as well, but they’ll cover that more in the next phase.”

  “Fair enough,” Rath allowed. “What about ears and nose?”

  “No fancy controls there, those are just enhanced. Your sense of smell gives you the ability to track things by scent now, much like a predatory animal. As you get more used to it, you’ll also be able to distinguish people’s unique scent signatures. The ears you control manually – by default, they are set to slightly above average hearing, and of course, a much wider tonal range – very low and high pitches are now audible to you. But you can also boost your hearing if needed in certain situations, to hear a whispered conversation from outside a window, for instance.”

  “Is that why I’ve been hearing a high-pitched whine?”

  “Ah, yes – you’re probably hearing some of the medical equipment in the next room. Go ahead and dial back those higher tones if they annoy you.” The surgeon held up a datascroll and flipped through several screens. “We talked about that … and that. Okay, that covers your sensory enhancements. You also have a number of cosmetic implants. For starters, there’s now a subdermal layer on your fingertips. It won’t interfere with your sense of touch at all, but it gives you the ability to create different fingerprint patterns at will – or have no fingerprints whatsoever, as if you were wearing gloves. Separately, the cartilage in your ears and nose has been replaced with small mechanical devices that enable you to alter the appearance of those features. Similarly, we have grafted a network of flexible plates onto the skull bones of your face—”

  “You did what?” Rath asked. “You took my face off?”

  “No, we merely implanted devices under your skin; it’s actually a minimally invasive procedure. And you still have your natural face; don’t worry. You just have the ability to alter your facial structure at will. Though when you activate the devices, I’m told you will feel some discomfort as your skin and muscles adjust to new configurations.”

  “I can change my face?”

  “To a certain extent, yes. We can’t alter the underlying bone structure very much, so certain configurations will be out of your range – people with very pronounced bone structure, or people that are obese, for instance. But you can mimic the majority of faces fairly well. You have an implant under your scalp that controls your hair length, color, and texture, too. Your hair is no longer natural, I’m afraid – it’s purely synthetic.”

  Rath touched his hair. “Feels normal,” he said.

  “It better,” the physician grunted, “that’s an expensive follicle generator unit. Your vocal chords have been enhanced, as well. They are tied to your internal computer, and can be reconfigured – stretched or loosened, if you will – in order to mimic other people’s voices. Your training will cover the details, but it’s tied to your audio sensors: once you attain a voice sample, your onboard computer can match pitch, tone, accent, etc.”

  “All automatically? I can just think ‘make me look like someone,’ and it just happens?”

  “No, the voice will match automatically, but of course, you need to learn that person’s mannerisms to ape them effectively. The facial reconfiguring is entirely manual, though – as much as we’ve tried, we cannot get computers to simulate faces well. Anyway, more to come in training, like I said.”

  “Is that it?” Rath asked.

  “No, one more thing: your skin is going to be a bit sensitive to the touch for the next few days. Believe it or not, you’ve got a full-body electronic ink tattoo. Right now it’s set at your original skin tone, but again, it’s fully customizable – you can create any skin tone necessary, or birth marks, tattoos, you name it.”

  “I can be whoever I want,” Rath said, glancing down at his hands.

  “That’s the idea,” the doctor agreed.

  “So I can go around and pretend to be a movie star, if I wanted to?”

  The surgeon shrugged. “I don’t think that would lend itself to being covert on a mission, but theoretically, yes, you could do that. You’d certainly fool the paparazzi, but up close, members of their family might be able to tell that something was a little off. Your body needs to heal a bit more before we activate and test those cosmetic enhancements, however, so I’ll be checking back in on you in a few days.”

  The surgeon unstrapped Rath’s wrists.

  “… and that’s it,” he said, peeling off his surgical gloves. “Follow me, please.”

  Rath touched his face, but aside from some tenderness, nothing felt amiss. He stood up and followed the surgeon out of the medical area and through several bulkheads, before taking an elevator down deep into the bowels of the facility.

  “Are we underwater?” Rath asked.

  Behind his mask, the surgeon nodded. “We are. How did you know?”

  “Thought I heard waves for a second there.”

  “Interesting,” the surgeon commented. “This new batch of sensors is definitely an upgrade. Anyway, yes, the training pods are all sub-surface. I’m not sure why.”

  When the elevator stopped, Rath followed the surgeon down several circular hallways, until they stopped at a pressurized hatch marked B04. The surgeon spun the hatch’s wheel-lock, and opened the door.

  “This is where I leave you. You’ll find instructions inside.”

  “Thanks,” Rath told him. The surgeon closed the hatch after he entered, and Rath heard the wheel spinning and locking the door into place. There was no wheel on the inside – but Rath was getting used to being locked inside places, that seemed to be company policy. He found himself in a spartan cabin, not dissimilar from the one he had stayed in on the deep space vessel. There was a bed, a toilet, sink and shower, and a food delivery panel recessed into the wall. Across from Rath, a raised walkway led from the living quarters through to a larger room, dominated by a spherical machine suspended in the center of the room. The only other object in the living quarters was a datascroll on the bed, which Rath picked up and flicked on. On it he found a meal ordering application, just like on the spaceship, and a checklist labeled Training Phase Milestones: Trainee 621. There seemed to be several pages of items on the checklist. Rath wasn’t hungry, so he tapped on the first item on the checklist: “Orientation.” The wall at the end of his bunk lit up, and Rath realized it was a viewing screen. The familiar, gold 50 symbol was rotating on the screen.

  “Welcome to Training Phase,” a voiceover announced. “This phase is designed to give you the knowledge and skills you need to have a successful career as a contractor. All training will take place in the simulation room behind you – the machine you see there allows us to create, with high fidelity, a myriad of virtual environments, equipment, and training scenarios. Your datascroll has a checklist of all the training modules you will need to complete.

  You will start with a basic military training course, which will give you a grounding in unarmed combat, familiarization and marksmanship
with a range of modern weaponry, and infantry tactics in various environments. Advanced training includes mimicry, mission planning, surveillance, covert entry and security penetration, and evasion and escape procedures. Upon successfully completing each module, you will be scored on your performance, to give you a sense for your strengths and capabilities. On average, trainees take eight to nine months to complete Training Phase. To begin training, don the touch-suit in the locker under your bunk, and proceed to the simulation room.”

  The screen showed a man opening a drawer under the bunk and putting on a full-body suit – Rath followed its lead and found his suit. It slid on smoothly but was bulkier than he expected, with wires and fibrous, muscle-like elements built onto the exterior – Rath guessed those were what allowed the suit to simulate the sensation of things touching his skin. Suited up, Rath walked down the gantry, and the simulation room seemed to wake up, motors humming to life, a gentle orange glow suffusing the room. The central sphere spun around on multiple axes, before coming to rest with the access panel pointed at Rath. The panel swung up, and he climbed in.

  10

  The combat training avatar was stocky and tanned, with grey hair cropped short on his head. He wore a perpetual scowl along with the uniform of a staff sergeant named Weiters in an unidentified Territorial military unit. Rath wondered, for about the fifth time, whether the avatar’s appearance and temperament were based on a real-life soldier. He decided they probably were.

  “On your feet!” Weiters thundered.

  Rath stood, taking a quick swig of water from his back-mounted hydration system.

  “Okay, 621, we’re going to try this one last time. You need to be cleaner with your transitions – remember, slow is smooth ….”

  “… and smooth is fast, Sergeant.” Rath finished.

  “Well, fucking do it, then! Be deliberate with the magazine changes: bring your weapon up, watch the magazine into the receiver, and then slide it home. And I’m not going to remind you to check your corners again, Trainee. I’m going to turn the pain level up on your suit another two notches for this round; you’ll probably get shot again, so maybe a little realistic pain will teach you to be thorough when you clear a room.”

  Rath winced, remembering the pain from the last burst when it tattooed him neatly up the leg and torso. “Yes, Sergeant,” he said, automatically.

  The building in front of him shimmered, and Rath knew the interior layout was shifting, floor layouts changing to a new configuration he had not yet experienced. The enemy avatars would be changing too, both in their strength, weapons, and positions. The spherical object in the simulation room, Rath had discovered, was an isolation pod that effectively removed Rath from the physical constraints of the real world, allowing him to move freely within the pod – and the simulation itself – without bumping into walls in the real world. In concert with the touch-simulators on Rath’s suit and the goggles he wore, the pod made for a very convincing virtual reality environment, where he could see, hear, touch and manipulate things in the virtual world, as he would normally. It also meant that it could simulate gravity and pain extremely well, as Rath had discovered several weeks prior, when he fell out a simulated third story window.

  Rath threaded a breaching grenade onto the end of his submachine gun’s barrel and snugged the weapon into his chest, cheek welded to the butt-stock. In his heads-up display, a red aiming reticle appeared overlaid on the building’s door, following the movement of his weapon’s barrel, rising and falling slightly with each breath he took.

  “Ready, 621?” Weiters asked.

  “Ready, Sergeant,” Rath confirmed.

  “Breach and clear!” Weiters directed.

  Rath’s finger depressed the trigger. The grenade fragmented in flight a split second before impact, shrapnel spreading into the pre-programmed pattern in order to shred every square inch of the door. Rath decided not to toss a stun grenade in before entering this time, and as a result was through the doorframe himself only a second behind the grenade’s fragments. He swung the weapon through a full arc covering the room – especially the corners – and found it empty. The room’s only exit appeared to be a narrow set of stairs leading upwards, but Rath had lost the element of surprise, so he crossed the room and put his back to the wall next to the stairs. He dropped the submachine gun, letting the sling hold it close across his chest, and selected a stun grenade and a smoke grenade from his utility belt. He tossed the smoke grenade up the stairs first, which elicited a wild burst of machine gun fire from someone up on the landing. He gave the smoke grenade another few seconds to obscure the stairs, and then tossed the stun grenade, switching to thermal vision on eye implants and shouldering the submachine gun again.

  The stun grenade exploded with a devastating thunderclap of noise and light, but Rath’s eye and ear implants filtered it down to something less than excruciating, and he was sprinting up the stairs as the echoes reverberated. He found the machine gunner writhing on the floor in pain, and shot him twice in the head, before stepping over the body and sweeping the hallway.

  Another avatar stepped out of a room on the far end of the hall, so Rath dropped to one knee, allowing the man’s unaimed shots to pass harmlessly overhead in the thick smoke. Rath took aim, and the targeting reticle in his heads-up display brightened noticeably as his aiming point overlapped the man’s heart, alerting him that the shot would be fatal. Rath fired a three-round burst, and paused for a second to see if any other avatars appeared. When they did not, he stood again and headed down the hall to the open door. His enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of several people breathing inside the room.

  The smoke was thinner here, so Rath held his weapon out at arms’ length and slipped the barrel past the edge of the doorframe. The weapon’s camera relayed a feed to his eye implants, and as Rath angled the weapon through a short arc to pan across the room, he found another two avatars, protecting a third avatar – the target, Rath realized – who was huddled behind them. The bodyguard avatars saw Rath’s weapon and opened fire, shouting. He took a step back from the doorframe, waiting for the fusillade to stop.

  “Come out, you Guild motherfucker!”

  Rath grinned – at least the simulation had a sense of humor. He pulled a small disk out of a cargo pocket, activated it with a button push, and slid it across the floor, where it came to a stop in the middle of the doorway. From several feet away, he adopted a threatening stance with the submachine gun, pointing it harmlessly against the wall. The device paused another second, then a hologram replica of Rath appeared in the doorway, mirroring his image exactly. Rath watched out of the corner of his eye as another volley of bullets tore through the hologram. The bullets stopped, and Rath heard a bolt close on an empty chamber.

  Rath ducked through his own hologram, stepping into the room and sweeping his submachine gun up. He put two bullets in the center of mass of one bodyguard and shifted his aim to the second. The gun made a loud CLICK, and his heads-up display flashed a message:

 

  Rath swore, but as he dropped the weapon, the unharmed bodyguard, a massive mountain of a man, dropped his own empty pistol and charged at him. Rath tried using a hip-throw to redirect the man’s momentum, but the man got a hand on his weapon sling, and they both ended up in a tangled heap on the floor, with Rath on the bottom.

  The bodyguard shifted his position, hands gripping Rath’s neck, choking him hard. Rath tried to smash his submachine gun into the man’s face, but the sling was trapped under him, and he could not put enough force into the blow. He dropped the weapon again, and reached for the man’s head with his left hand, drawing his fighting knife with his right. Rath pulled the man’s head forward as he thrust upwards, plunging the blade into the man’s neck. The avatar choked, spilling blood onto Rath as he tumbled forward. With an effort, Rath pushed him off to one side, withdrawing the knife to let the man bleed more freely. He stood up and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
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  The target was pointing a pistol at him, and though it was one of the bodyguards’ weapons, it appeared to have been reloaded. Rath leaped forward as the weapon fired, and felt the stinging slap of a bullet impact his stomach. He batted the pistol to one side before the target could fire again, and tackled the man into the wall, driving the knife into his chest as he did so. The man screamed, firing a round harmlessly into the floor before Rath got both hands on the man’s pistol hand, twisting the weapon cruelly out of his hands. He stepped away from the man, who, Rath realized, had been pinned to the wall by the force of the knife thrust. Rath grimaced and fired two rounds into the man’s heart.

  “How was that, Sergeant?” he asked.

  “Like a goddamn soup sandwich: sloppy.” Weiters materialized in the room. “But at least they only shot you once this time. Let’s reset and try it again.”

  * * *

  “Over the last few months, you’ve learned how to kill,” the avatar said, sipping an espresso in the chair across from Rath. In contrast to the Basic Training avatar, the Advanced Training avatar was totally non-descript, a medium-height, medium-build man who had refused to give his name.

  “You’ll still do two or three hours of combat training each day to keep advancing your skills,” the avatar continued. “But from now on, the bulk of your time will be with me. There are two reasons why the Group can command the high prices we do. First, your Selection ensured you have the discipline to complete any assignment given. Hence, the Group can guarantee to our clients that every contract will be fulfilled. But the second reason is our real differentiator, and it’s what you’re about to learn now. Your true value doesn’t come from how relentless or lethal you are. It comes from how invisible you are. Our clients pay – handsomely – for subtlety.”

  “Subtlety?” Rath asked.

  The avatar set his espresso cup back on the table. “The fine art of deception.”

  “The ability to physically mimic anyone,” Rath said.