Replica (Original Work)

Prologue - Midnight Run

April 22, 2076. 23:46 hours.

I took slow, heavy breaths as I secured the rifle to the hydraulic monopod jammed into the edge of the seventy story rooftop. The thing was more akin to cannon than gun, and carrying it plus the monopod up so many flights of stairs was a real bitch. I looked through the now steady scope and settled the crosshairs on a precise point one thousand nine hundred sixty meters away. It was an unassuming, poorly lit street corner, the sort of place you'd expect to buy "discount" amphetamine or biotabs from a shady guy in an overcoat. Not a very dignified place to die, but then what was?

The ocean breeze blew strong and cool that night. It might have been calming if it wasn't absolute hell on ballistics. Without my AI assist scope and neural fire control software, I'd have called the shot impossible. I needed to account for several seconds of travel time, so I'd only get one chance at this range. Best make it count.

I eased my cheek onto the rest and connected the scope's output cable to the neural interface port behind my left ear. As the software booted, I focused on the corner, took another deep breath, then engaged the thoughtsync uplink with the rest of my team.

"Lucy 636 in position. Report."

Cutter was the first to barge in. "You okay Lucy? Feels like an absolute mess in here tonight."

I tightened my jaw and ground down a little on my teeth. "Would you be? Unpleasant work, all the way around. I'm not a sociopath you know."

"Your history would suggest otherwise," he said. His voice was insufferably coy, even over the sync. I closed my eyes and focused on what I thought of him. Being thoughtsynced with a violence fetishist like Cutter may have been less than ideal, but it was also the most direct way to let him know how I felt about his proclivities.

"Ouch. That stings Luce', it really does," He said.

"Hugs and kisses. Next time don't insist on riding around in here."

"Whatever. Target is en route. Be ready."

Figures moved across my scope. Mostly the usual suspects. Businessmen headed home from late shifts or back downtown for infidelities, prostitutes targeting the businessmen, a few delinquents, nothing off the mark yet.

"Dunlap, Peirce, Boones? Are you in position?" I asked.

All three of the men answered with a simple "Roger."

"Good. O'Donnell, you there?"

"Ready and waiting, Lucy."I tightened my jaw.

The next to appear on the corner were the bodyguards. Big guys, bald and nearly identical as far as I could tell. Genestock like me, maybe. Maybe just grunts so grafted you couldn't tell the difference. They looked up and down the street, oblivious to the fact that the threat was nearly two kilometers away. One of them turned, gesturing to somebody inside the building behind them. I tightened my finger.

The unfortunate was a young man, late twenties or early thirties. He ran his fingers through his slicked back hair and adjusted his silk tie as he stepped into my line of sight. He had a soft, round face. The sort of face that told you he didn't know squat about how cutthroat the world was. There was something else too, a certain gleam in his eye that suggested this was a man on a mission. It didn't matter, corporate wanted him dead. That made him my problem now.

The scope verified my mark, and made the necessary windage adjustments. I eased the rifle up and to the left to recenter the crosshairs over the young man. Ballistic data filled my vision. So long as my scope and neural interface were functioning properly, the math confirmed a direct hit. No hesitation. I stopped breathing, and squeezed the trigger.

Crack. The sound was deafening, as though the whole city was silenced in its wake. I braced myself against the recoil of the gun, keeping my eye on the target as twenty millimeters of judgement spun toward him from the smoking barrel. The gas from the brake hit me so hard my lungs felt like they were on fire, but I'd been drilled on heavy rifles since activation. I could take it.

One second. Don't. Two seconds. Move. Three seconds. Hit. Death bloomed in all its hideous beauty. Half of the young man sprayed across the sidewalk as concrete exploded behind his shattered body.

I looked away and shuddered. There was a certain exquisite romanticism to it all, killing a man who had no clue you were even there. This was the worst part of the job. The part where I realized, somewhere in the unmentionable depths of my psyche, something inside me liked it. I was trained to like it.

"Kill confirmed," O'Donnell said. "Moving to stage two."

"Damn, did you see that? Sucker popped like a balloon." Cutter sounded like an excited child.

"Would you kindly shut the hell up?" I was still on edge. Routine job indeed.

"Not on your life sister. You know how much I like to hear myself-"

He cut out.

"Cutter?" No answer, not good. He loved to hear himself talk. "Dunlap? Boones?" Nobody was responding.

I pulled the gun off the monopod and started to disassemble it. I placed each individual component into the long black case at my feet, closed the snaps and snatched it up. Time to haul ass. That's when the searchlights appeared, blinding, white, and trained right on me.

"Well... Shit."