Seven days later. Terra Geminus System. Exact location and time unknown.

The room was dark and cold. Two nameless quasi-evil scientist drones were laboring away in the lab. One appeared more frustrated than the other. The lone window in the room faced a small room where a young woman was laying on a bed.

“Did you hear how much Dr. Norman has spent on this resurrection project?” the disgruntled scientist asked.

“Nope, doesn’t really matter to me. I work on whatever projects I’m assigned to.”

“Over two trillion at this point,” he shook his head, “My railgun project was just over fifty billion and arguable will be more beneficial for the union.”

“From a military standpoint sure. But you know how important the genic goals we have.”

Just then Dr. Norman entered the room, “She is critical to said goals, whereas your improved weapon systems were completed because we need to provide our military an edge from time to time. What is the status of our patient?”

The disgruntled scientist looked like he had sucked a lemon, “No change sir. All vitals remain as-is.”

“We are running additional simulations for our plan. We’d rather not make an error at such a critical juncture.”

“Good, can you explain to me once more what your plan is?” Dr. Norman said from the window.

“As you are well aware the weapon’s body still functions as normal with no ill effects at cryogenic temperatures. We’re planning on cooling the room down to sixty-five Kelvin. We believe, based on past studies with her, that this is the lower limit of her feeling ‘chilly’ or something similar to that,” the disgruntled man said as he reviewed the simulation results.

“At that point, we’re going to begin neural shock therapy. Shock therapy appears to have potential, but I think it’s been too warm for her to work in the past.”

“What are the odds?” Dr. Norman asked icily.

“Of lasting damage to her? Slim to none.”

“But not zero?”

The disgruntled scientist pushed his chair back to see Dr. Norman, “It’s not possible to drill it down to zero sir. None of the other therapies appeared to do any last damage. It’s no longer a physiological issue, it appears to be entirely mental. Despite our vast medical advances, this is the trickiest area to fix.”

“Very well. When can you begin?”

The scientist that was in a good mood responded, “I am already beginning to cool the room down. In five minutes, we will begin with the shock therapy.”

The scientist was monitoring their workstations while glancing at Dr. Norman. He stood there motionless. They couldn’t begin to comprehend what he was thinking or planning. None of the other scientists had been killed due to their failure to resuscitate the weapon. But they could feel the tension in the air. Perhaps it was the comments from the disgruntled scientist, or it could be the entire saga of not getting the weapon awake and functioning once more.

“Sir, we’ve reached the desired temperature. Her vitals are nominal, would you like us to continue.”

“Please do.”

The scientist shared a look at one another. Neither one wanted to press the shock button. The disgruntled one blinked first and thus earned that right. He spun back to face his monitor and pressed the button to initiate shock therapy.

The weapon’s eyes briefly opened each shock, but they shut immediately. Dr. Norman and the two scientists all saw the same thing. Dr. Norman walked back and reviewed the results on one of the spare terminals.

“Reduce the temperature to forty kelvin and increase the voltage.”

“We haven’t tested or simulated that scenario, sir. We’re not sure if it will do any lasting damage,” the disgruntled scientist said.

“Do it now,” Dr. Norman snapped back at the men.

“Lowering the temperatures, will need a couple of minutes,” the other scientist said in response, “Let’s run a quick simulation here just in case.”

Five minutes later the room was at the designated temperature. Neither scientist appeared willing to begin the shock therapy. Her heart rate was slowing down slightly, and her skin began to get uncomfortably cold for her.

“Initiate it now,” Dr. Norman commanded.

“Sir, the simulation just finished and suggested we could do damage to her if this fails.”

“DO IT NOW!” Dr. Norman screamed as spittle flew out of his mouth.

The disgruntled scientist moved into a slightly defensive position and looked at the floor, “Yes… yes sir.”

The button was pressed. The weapon convulsed painfully on the table. Her hands curled into fists and her legs pushed her back off the gurney. The restraints holding her down had failed due to the temperature and force she exerted on them. Then they heard a horrific scream of anguish come from the room.

“LEEEEEEX NOOOOOOOOO!” Lisa was awake once more.

A blast of uncontrolled cryogenic energy surged out from her. It had flash force everything in the room, including some of the bulkheads to almost absolute zero. She pushed herself off the gurney but fell on the floor.

“You, go help her up.”

The happy scientist got up and ran out of the room and down the hallway. The door wouldn’t open when it was commanded to. But it shattered into bits when he accidentally touched the door. His fingertip that touched the door instantly developed frostbite. The scientist carefully walked into the room looking at his fingertip but was then blasted with a fresh wave of cryogenic energy.

The scientist was frozen dead in that instant, but he had been moving forward. The energy blast did nothing to stem his momentum. His ankle shattered in thousands of fleshy icicles. His body slowly toppled over and slammed onto the ground. His body shattered into thousands of gory shards of human ice.

“You, go in there and help her.”

The disgruntled scientist grew a spine, “Fuck that noise sir, she needs to control her power before we can go in. I’m not getting turned into that.”

Dr. Norman looked at the man in disgust and turned to the terminal near the window. He turned off the cryogenic cooling in the room. The intercom was pressed next.

“Control yourself, my dear. We are here to help. All will be explained once you get under control.”

Lisa looked over at the window. Anguish filled her features. The connection she had with her twin was empty. A part of her very being, possibly even her soul, had been violently torn from her. The pain of that loss was still present, but she could barely move her legs and arms. It was as if they were lead weights. She closed her eyes and remembered her training. Slowly but surely, she contained the furious energies blasting out from her body.

Eventually, she had things under control. She curled into a ball and began to cry. The feeling of loss was overwhelming her. She could hear steps from down the hall. She noticed a scientist over the thawing remains of someone. Dr. Norman leaned down and patted her head.

“It’ll be fine. I need you to be fit and back to service. We have a lot of work to do. You will have your revenge soon, this I swear.”

Saturday. 15:25 Downtown Annapolis, Vergis Commercial Building

Annapolis and Naval Police had interrupted the friends as they were watching the Navy football game at an upscale sports bar. John’s annoying tendency to attract all sorts of trouble hit the cadets in the face once more. The Alliance kill team had been spotted in their vicinity.

John swore under his breath and told his friends to stay put with the police. He’d handle things. Alice looked more worried than normal. John gave her a kiss, then grabbed one of the officer’s sidearm and ran out of the building.

He darted into the commercial building across the street from them. He put an earpiece in his ear as he ran up the stairs. As he was doing this, he made a call to the emergency line.

“Transfer me to the active situation near the Vergis building, please. Authorization Lief Tango-Foxtrot-Two-Three-Nine-Zeta-Charlie.”

“Uh yes, one moment,” the dispatcher said unsurely, “Transferring you now.”

John heard the line click, “Do you have visuals on the hostiles?”

“Yes, they are on the roof, currently setting up. We managed to get to you before they were monitoring you.”

“When the roof access door opens, you are to cease any recording.”

“We can’t do that, anytime the Annapolis PD is onsite we must have complete coverage.”

“I’ll let you have fun with Naval Intelligence when they come down to visit y’all when this is over,” John said with a smirk as he continued to run up the stairwell.

“Uhmm, hmmm,” the dispatcher said as they muted their line.

Naval Intelligence was rightly regarded as the boogeyman in Confederate Space. People have been known to disappear, though in fairness those people had done highly illegal things and had earned their disappearance. No one wanted to be on the other end of the gun from them though, very few people have won that stare down.

“APD will comply with Naval Intelligence’s request. We will have two people monitoring the visual feed though.”

“Acceptable, contact Intelligence and let them know who’s viewing it. They should do so in a secure room too.”

John was almost to the roof, he paused at the door and caught his breath, “How many hostiles?”

“Two are by the northwest corner of the roof. There are two faint heat signatures though.”

John paused and pulled out his tablet, “Share the feed with me.”

A small heat source could be found just in front of the door. Another one was on the other side of the roof from the sniper team. John looked around the room and found a galvanized pipe leaning up against the wall. It wasn’t an elegant weapon, but it could still be useful.

John opened the door and swung the pipe down at roughly where the heat signature was. A bone-crunching sound was made followed by what sounded like gurgling. Someone was wearing a stealth suit, but they just had their skull crushed in by a fifteen-pound pipe swung at a much higher speed and with more force than normal humans were capable of.

The stealth suit turned off its camouflage field after the enemy agent crumpled to the ground. John looked down and saw a pistol with a suppressor. He reached down and grabbed it.

“I presume you're still watching this?” John whispered.

“Holy shit…” the voice trailed off before coughing and regaining composure, “Yes, we are here.”

“Guide me to the other heat source,” John said without a hint of emotion in his voice.

The wind whipped about the building and was almost deafening that day. John crouched down and used the helicopter landing pad to obscure his movements. The officer on the other end was not used to giving precise instructions. This bothered John, it was a life-or-death matter, because he really didn’t want to get shot or worse because of incompetence on someone else’s part.

He took another step forward and could see the tell tail rippling that optical camouflage gave off. John didn’t know what direction the operative was facing. He looked down at the stones on the ground. More stones were displaced close to him, that was the best evidence he had that that wore their heels were planted.

He then saw stone’s partway a bit as the agent moved closer to the edge. Now was the time. John dashed over the air duct and tried to place a forward kick at where he thought the operative was. But it was a glancing blow across the back.

His foot did connect with some electronic device built into the armor which caused the camouflage to disengage. The operative, thoroughly shocked and overly surprised to be attacked, turned around and tried to level his weapon at his attacker.

John was one step ahead of him. He had closed the distance and put a hand on the pistol. John’s other arm grabbed the agent’s upper arm. The operative tried to kick John, but that was exactly what he wanted. The kick was caught with the arm, John then spun around and threw the operative off the building.

“Ciao asshole,” John said quietly as he crouched down.

He crept closer to the snipers. Unfortunately for them, they hadn’t heard the commotion. Normally this much noise and wind were a great nuisance, but not today. John moved slowly toward them, pistol drawn and at low ready.

“What the fuck is with the spooks?” the sniper said.

“What do you mean, we’re all spooks,” the spotter responded.

“You know damn well what I was saying,” the sniper said as he moved from building to building in his rifle’s scope, “The spooky boys, they were all chatty. Why aren’t they reporting in.”

“Dunno. Not my concern. You see the target?”

“Negative, don’t see shit in fact. The bar we were told they were in has refractive windows. No hits on known acquaintances…”

The spotter didn’t get a chance to finish the question. John jumped down from the Helicopter pad right behind the spotter. They didn’t have time to react to John. He had picked up and shoved the spotter off the rooftop.

The sniper heard the screaming and looked up. John punched him in the face knocking him out. He dragged the man up the stairs and tied his arms to the railing.

16:05 Vergis Building Rooftop

John was leaning on the edge of the building looking at his tablet. Police and Military drones were already recalled. No audio or visual recordings would be made. Three enemy operatives were confirmed dead, with two currently splattered on the ground fifty stories down.

Civilians hadn’t noticed the first body that was thrown over, it had landed in a heavily shrubbed piece of greenspace. The other landed three steps from the entrance of the building and landed mere feet from a park bench. That freaked the citizens justifiable out of their minds. The poor man sitting on the bench pissed his pants when he saw and heard the body land next to him.

“Hey honey,” John said nonchalantly into his tablet, “Yeah this team is accounted for. Got some interrogating to do. I presume they took y’all out the back exit?”

“Oh, thank god you're safe. Yeah, though the boys fought to stay to watch the end of the game. We won, by the way, I’m guessing you were interested in that because your weird and all.”

“Yay!” John exclaimed as he saw movement in the corner of his eye, “Ok honey, I’ll be home soon. Need to get back to work and stuff.”

John ended the call and walked over to the bottom step and watched the enemy operative. They spat out a mouthful of blood and groaned. Eventually, they opened their eyes and squinted.

“Fuck me…”

“I’m going to be overly blunt here. I don’t really care if you live or die. I don’t even care if you have any viable intel. If you lie to any of my questions, you’re going to get shot. Do you get me?”

“Fuck off.”

John drew his pistol and aimed at the operative’s head. He pulled the trigger. A white-hot shell casing spat out the right side of the case as a one-hundred sixty-grain bullet screamed through the air. In less than a blink of an eye, the bullet struck true, shredding the operative’s right ear.

“FUUUUUUCK,” the operative said as blood began flowing down the man’s cheek and neck.

“Unless that wasn’t clear enough, I’m not in a good mood. You loot threatened me and my friends. That you are still alive is by the grace of my restraint. Don’t think I’m above torturing you to death.”

“Fuck fuck fuck this hurts,” the operative whined.

“Who do you work for?” John said quietly without emotion.

“Alliance SIS.”

“Why the hell are you on Earth?”

“To kill you obviously.”

“Under what orders?”

“None.”

John raised the gun.

“Hold on, WAIT!” the operative yelled, “It was a volunteer mission, totally off the books. We didn’t get the details until after we were underway. Practically not till we crossed the border.”

“Don’t suppose you have a copy of the orders or remember the justification for a kill mission?”

The operation shook his head, “No copies of it, it was because of the battle here.”

“Elaborate,” John said icily.

“I won’t say this on record,” the operative paused, “But you humiliated several admirals. They had this grand plan to cut the head off the snake so they could go after the Confederacy. But then you came in and changed the tide. Now our people are facing starvation because of it.”

John shook his head, “They aren’t facing starvation because of me. That’s projecting and you know it. They are facing starvation because your government hasn’t bothered to ensure food security. Y’all always rely on imports. And now you’re paying through the roof to supplement your food needs because you committed an act of war.”

“Look, it wasn’t supposed…”

“Work that way? For fucks sake dude. If the attack succeeds, we’re at war. Like hard at war. Do you think we wouldn’t attack Aquilae Prime directly as a response? That we aren’t actively at war right now is because the Confederacy doesn’t want a war.”

“Yeah, obviously shit went south,” the operative said.

“How big is this war-hungry faction?”

“About ten percent of the politicians are openly calling for war. Double or more than that behind the scenes. In the SIS, I think only a few higher-ups are on board with that, though the only ones I know for sure are for it was the ones that sent us. They report a good way down from the boss.”

“Wonderful. Just fucking great,” John said as he holstered his gun, “So we have little brother waving his dick around trying to look all tough.”

“War’s coming mate, if not now but soon. The people are slowly falling for all the bullshit the government is feeding them. It’s only a matter of time until more pro-war representatives get voted in. Then you wait, we will come for you.”

“You are right that war is coming, but things may not end up the way your politicians and admirals think they will,” John looked up at the helipad, “That good enough for you lot?”

Three friendly agents turned off their active camouflage systems. The common electric sparking sound was made as the agents came into focus. Two jumped down on either side of the enemy operative. One-shot him with a sedative. When he has knocked out he untied his arms and pulled him up on the pad.

A rumbling engine could be heard in the distance closing on them. Nothing could be seen through. The noise got louder and louder until it was practically on top of them. A shuttle door opened in the sky, it was hovering over the pad and descending closer to it.

“We’ll take care of the rest,” the lead agent said.

The other two pulled the enemy operative onto the vessel. The leader of the trio then hopped onto the shuttle. The door closed and then the shuttle's engines fired up and roared away from the building.

John gave the finger and looked at nowhere in particular in the sky, “Yeah, thanks dicks. Just leave me up here. I’ll find my way back home. For fucks sake.”