Unit HAZE

Prologue

Prologue- Pursuit

"Hah, hah, hah, hah...!" He tried to muffle his panting as much as he could, though the equipment they used was probably sensitive enough to detect even that. The street he ran down was empty, with no signs of inhabitants. As he ran, he felt a sharp pain bite him in his right calf.
"Ah!?" The pain caused him to fall to the ground, landing roughly in an area littered with dirty puddles. He looked behind him and saw the unmistakeable glint of a sniper scope. He was not being followed, so they must have been hidden within the building on the corner that he paid no heed to. He reached for his left thigh whilst staring down the sniper. Another shot was fired at his face, but he somehow avoided it by moving his neck an instant before the trigger was pulled. Using this opportunity, he fired a shot from his handgun and ran. The fact that no further shots came his way was confirmation that it was a hit.
He chose a building at random and hid in it, sitting against the wall to the side of the door, so that in the case the door were to open, he would be hidden from view. He wiped the sweat and dirty water droplets from his forehead and examined the wound on his calf. Despite the bullet being from a large calibre rifle, his wound was small; barely bleeding, in fact.
He reloaded his pistol even though he only fired one shot. His breathing slowed as he calmed himself.
A loud humming noise entered his ears.
(A helicopter? They're bringing one in already!?) he kicked off the ground and towards the back window. Seconds after he leaped through the glass, the entire front wall of the building was torn apart by the guns mounted on the helicopter.
The model was called a Drake MK.V. This helicopter was so cutting edge that it was kept a secret from all the world's militaries. It gained lift and propulsion from the two sets of blades that almost hit each other during counter rotation. Mounted on each side was a large gun that looked like a machine gun, but fired explosive buckshot rounds. It was designed to destroy nuclear bunkers.
"Fuck that." He pulled from his back what looked like a rocket launcher round. Not even bothering to aim, he fired a three prong hook attached to a thick black cable at the next building in his way, which looked like an apartment complex. Once the hook was firmly fixated where he wanted, the cable began to wind back into the cylindrical case, pulling his body upwards. After pulling himself up and over the building, he placed the case on his back and ran across the open field he found himself at. He had to get some distance between him and the helicopter. Or perhaps.......
The helicopter came into view, and he ran towards it. The one flaw in the state of the art vehicle was that it could not aim it's weapons directly down. The designers never anticipated someone going below it to attack, since its base was heavily reinforced, so much so that usual military missiles would struggle to bring it down.
Multiple rounds were fired at him, but he seemed to weave through the small explosions caused on impact. Huge clumps of dirt and mud flew at his face as he ran, but he ignored them all and focused on the area beneath the helicopter. Once he found his way under the chopper, he fired his hook at one of the guns. Of course, there would be many armed men ready for an assault on board.
(Hear goes.) the cable dragged his body up to the chopper at quite a high speed, with the momentum of his ascent bringing him above the position of the hook. Whilst in the air, he fired three shots into the open air cargo hold. When he fell back down, he used his free hand to grab the machine gun and haul himself into the cargo area, where he found three dead bodies all with bullets in their heads. He checked the pilot area. What was surprising was what wasn't there. There were no controls and no pilot. The Drake MK.V was an autonomous vehicle.
He could not set the chopper to crash into anything. His only weapon was his handgun. If he stayed in the chopper, he would be subjected to sniper fire. In the worst case scenario, the chopper could crash itself with him inside. Even if he just left it alone, it would follow him and give away his location.
He looked down at his gun. It looked similar to a regular pistol, but with personal customisations such as a suppressor, a handle that could fold out from the right side to give better accuracy and stability, and it also had a knife attachment under the suppressor. However, the knife and suppressor were the same length, meaning that the blade would be useless. Unless......
Perhaps he never intended to keep the suppressor for too long.
Without hesitation, he jumped from the open air cargo hold and swung his pistol and the suppressor flew towards the chopper blades. Once contact was made, the suppressor detonated. In was only a small explosion, but it was enough to cripple the chopper. They both fell from the sky. He directed his fall towards the earlier apartment building. He planted his hands and feet onto it, and skidded to a halt. The full body suit he was wearing had many cutting edge features, with one among those being that the area of the hands and feet could magnetise, and cling to certain metals. Luckily, this particular building contained such metals. He looked down and saw the helicopter exploding in a great ball of flames and scorching metal.
Not wanting to be noticed by snipers, he climbed down from the building and resumed running. If he was correct, he had under an hour to go. About forty minutes?
Over the next thirty or so minutes, he was running almost continuously with only the occasional sniper to deal with. They weren't in the mood to send more helicopters, since any more being destroyed would be too expensive.
His escape landed him in an alley where gunfire came from ahead off him. With no space to move, he pulled out his own gun, but he did not shoot. He redirected bullet after bullet with his knife-like bayonet. Once he judged them to be out of ammunition, he opened fire. Six bullets were fired, one for each target, and all hit.
"Too easy." He did not even bother to reload. However, his arrogance was his downfall. He received a strike to the head from behind. He retained consciousness, but dropped his gun. He turned around, and saw that his opponent held a large shotgun.
"Looks like you're gonna be the last one. Lucky you."
The opponent took a step forward and the trigger was pulled. However, no blood flew throughout the area. He had avoided the shot by jumping over his opponent and then landing behind him, before grabbing his head and twisting it until he heard an unpleasant snapping noise.
"And that's that." He casually leaned on a wall and waited.
Minutes later a high pitched beep sounded, followed by a voice.
"Tsubachi Izuka of unit HAZE; you have survived until the time limit. You may now make your way to the elevator."
Tsubachi walked leisurely to the centre of the town. There was a large circular platform. As soon as he stood on it, the platform rose up into a hole in the sky. And then, that sky vanished, leaving behind the view of thousands, if not millions of metal panels. That sky was just an image projected by the dome of what were called 'Chameleon Panels'. These panels had special properties that allowed one side of them to show any image. If enough were gathered together, a very realistic image could be made. To coordinate millions of them to produce the randomness and calmness of the sky was truly only possible with the large Supercomputer called the 'Harmony Cube'.