Adapt and Survive || Splinter Cell: Conviction (Book)

Chapter One

Author's Note: A reimagining of the ending of Splinter Cell: Conviction (the book, not the game!). I love this book. It's my favorite of all the Splinter Cell books. I couldn't get this alternate storyline out of my head after reading it, so I just decided to write it down. If you haven't read the book (and don't care about reading it in the future), here's the basic plotline:

Sam is on the run since the aftermath of Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Ben Hansen and his team (Maya Valentina, Kim Gillespie, Nathan Noboru, and Allen Ames) are trying to track him down and bring him in (this takes place before the events of Splinter Cell: Conviction the game). Meanwhile Sam is trying to find the 738 Arsenal, a massive stolen arsenal of high powered weaponry. Eventually they team up to place trackers on the arsenal at the auction and Ames is outed as a mole for Kovac (the head of Third Echelon who has ties to the auction). Ames escapes their custody, but the rest continue on to the auction regardless.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the story and, as always, enjoy!

Chapter One

They were so close now Sam could taste it.

But even as the thought flickered through Sam's mind, another more sinister twin to it was lurking just a step behind. They had cleared the top level without incident, finding a sizeable stash of the 738 Arsenal that they promptly tagged with the nanobots. It had been easy enough to find the stockpile and they hadn't encountered a soul along the way.

Sam wasn't complaining that it was so easy, but it did nag him in a way he couldn't fully put into words. Where were the buyers? The guards? It could very well be that they were all down on the lower levels, but could it really be this simple? At this rate, they would be in and out with no one the wiser to their presence within the hour.

All of this passed through Sam's mind as the five of them made their way down to the second sublevel. They stalked down the concrete ramp and Sam still marveled at just how massive the underground complex was. The ramp they occupied ran around a central shaft that ran the height of the complex, the bottom floor lost to darkness beyond the scope of their night vision goggles. The shaft itself was a good thirty feet across and the ramp another fifteen. On each of the four floors were four offshoots to various sections of the facility—Medical, Electronics, Weapons, and Ballistics. Suitably, the first cache of the arsenal they had found was in the ballistics wing. Sam assumed the other two-thirds or so of it would be scattered among the lower three levels of Ballistics as well. Even so, as they came around to the second level, Sam had them split off one to each wing, with him staying in the center and covering wherever he might be needed.

With nods from his four companions who then set off to their own tasks, Sam sunk himself into a dark corner to wait, eyes and ears alert and searching.

The utter silence pressed in on Sam, unnerving him even further. Not in a way that made him afraid, but somehow it stroked that nerve that always told Sam something was wrong. Things were too quiet. Even in such a large facility, there should be some kind of noise—footsteps, chattering voices, scuffling, shifting. Anything. Life was never silent. And Sam knew there had to be hundreds of buyers gathered to such an auction with ample security to match.

It still bothered Sam that they hadn't been able to figure out who was holding the auction. If they at least had that bit of information, he would have had a better guess at what kind of forces they would be facing. He hated going into a situation blind. But they hadn't had a choice. Just like Sam hadn't had a choice in joining together with Hansen and his team. Not that he regretted it, except maybe for the fact that Ames had gotten away.

Sam shoved away the thought. That score would have to be settled another day. Right now he needed to focus on the task at hand.

Five minutes passed with nothing but radio silence coming through Sam's earpiece. They had had to scrounge for gear before they came, trading their OPSATs for prepaid phones with wireless headsets lest Kovac get any word of their presence at the auction. It was too risky to even bring them along with the GPS tracking they had installed. Better to leave them at the motel and let Kovac think they had lost the trail.

Just as Sam was about to activate his headset and ask for a status report, a flicker of movement caught his eye from the next level down. From the brief flash, it had seemed like someone darting into a doorway, but it had been too quick for Sam to tell. Now Sam debated whether or not he should check it out. It could take the team another fifteen or twenty minutes to search the rest of the level and they didn't have time to wait. Sam wanted to be out of there as soon as possible. Plus there were undoubtedly more ways to get up and down to the other floors other than the ramp and Sam didn't want to lose this person. They could very well lead him to the rest of the buyers or auction staff. Sam couldn't pass up the opportunity to gather more intel, which was something they were severely lacking.

"Saw something down on the next level," he whispered into his headset. "Everyone keep up the search. I'm going to check it out."

"Roger that. Be careful," was all that came back through from Ben before that unnatural silence settled in once more.

Carefully, Sam picked his way down the ramp, staying to the deep shadows that hung between each cone of light shining from the wall-mounted sconces. Once on the lower level, Sam located the door where he had seen the disturbance. He crouched by the entrance, listening for movement on the other side.

Nothing.

Ever so slowly, he peeked around the corner, but he could see no more than a few feet into the large room. He was on the ballistics side of the complex and if this room was anything like the one above, then it was nearly a hundred yards long and just as wide; an enormous open space for building and testing missiles and rocket engines. The room was pitch-black, the only light coming in from the lights bordering the doorway.

Sam pulled his head back and flicked his night vision goggles down. A small whining hum sounded as they activated and filled his vision with grainy green images. They were certainly no Third Echelon caliber gear, but they would do. He peered around the corner again. He could see further now, but not by much. There just wasn't enough light for even the night vision to pick up.

Why would someone have gone in here in the dark? Sam asked himself. Granted, whoever it was knew the facility layout better than Sam. There could very well be a doorway just a few steps away that led to some other part of the complex. Regardless of the reason, Sam had to continue on. He had to find this person. He had to find someone, if only to assuage his own sense of unease.

Committing himself to the action, Sam swung around the open doorway, silenced pistol up and ready as he looked left and then right. He stepped a few steps into the room, the darkness encompassing him further and the exposure on his goggles brightening to compensate. Ahead of him he could now see a few towering stacks of boxes and shelves stacked high with weapon and ammo cases. Nothing that they were looking for though. No, these were decades old by the looks of them, covered in such a thick layer of dust that it was impossible to distinguish what was what.

Sam headed further in, meticulously checking his flanks as he went, though that became harder and harder as the room widened out to its full extent. Just as he was coming level with the first stack of boxes, a beam of light poured directly into his face, blinding him through his goggles. Instinctively, Sam pulled to the right to shield himself behind the boxes, but a body crashed into him before he could get to cover. He staggered backward, trying to pull his feet underneath himself, but the person continued to shove into him. Sam struggled to obtain some manor of control over the situation, even to get a blind shot off onto his attacker, but the man had grabbed Sam's gun hand and had forced it out to the side. As they passed the doorway, Sam's hand smashed into the frame of the door and his pistol went flying, Sam's arm bowing in from the impact.

At this point, he still couldn't see anything. The goggles had overcompensated for the flash of light and had gone virtually black. His Third Echelon gear was able to adjust brightness practically as fast as the human eye, but these knockoffs weren't nearly as good. They were still recovering when Sam felt himself slam into what he assumed was the concrete half-wall that comprised the edge of the ramp. Past that three foot wall was a dead drop into the open space of the central shaft.

And in the next second, Sam was tumbling over it, his only view the face of his attacker as his night vision goggles finally adjusted to the light.

Ames had come back.