LifeShield

Battle

An aide steps to the table, "Sir, they're in position. Waiting on your command."

All eyes turn to the president. After one scorching look at Fiona, he nods. "Do it."

'Idiots,' Fiona thinks. 'But it shut them up about the communications system.'

Forgotten, she leans back to stare as the screens come to life around her, fascinated despite herself by the half intelligible symbols of conflict. She zeros in on the part she can understand, a bright monochrome satellite view of the team preparing for action. Video from soldiers line the edges, revealing dark buildings, and green-edged guards. A separate map connects lines between the team and the guards, targets and firing patterns locking in. The last line connects.

A faceless voice barks, "Now."

Darts shoot out. Guards crumple. The team races in to grab badges and swipe in through the doors. They stream through the hallways, racing up stairs to split across two highlighted floors. More people crumple. Surveillance taken out.

The president mutters, "Tranquilizers. We're not the monsters you think."

Fiona grimaces, but says nothing.

The speaker blares, "They got an alert out. We'll have incoming soon. Move people!"

Camera views jostle down identical rows of server racks, their fronts a bobble of blurred green flickers. Explosives are slapped on, activation beeps whispering of destruction to come. Two minutes. That's all it takes before the order is given to move out.

The solder race across the lobby, head cams bouncing as boots slap the tile floor.

Fiona bows her head. She's seen this moment, or ones like it, a thousand times in her mind. Echoes of her parents screams haunting her dreams. Memories of a shattered childhood lurking away under the surface, driving her. And now, where expensive therapy failed, maybe this could finally put those ghosts to rest.

If my little mouse brains learn their final lesson. She had hope, but there was literally no way to know. She'd burned the results of a hundred billion simulations into their core, but there'd been no way to unit test a war, load test the real world. No, she'd hit the point where she had to unleash their code on an unforgiving world. I've given them tools, and cunning. Let's see what they do with them.

On the screens, soldiers burst through the building doors. Instantly, their LifeShields flare from an onslaught of gun fire. Fiona snorts when the retreat to bursts of fire from their rifles. Training, guess a day's not enough. And so much for tranquilizers.

She gasps with everyone else at the glow of LifeShields from beyond. A dozen at least, with far more forms than that taking up positions around the building. A distorted voice crackles in the room, "Orders?"

The CIA Director yells, "Hold!"

"We got two minutes left on the detonators."

"Understood." In a phone plastered to his face, he screeches, "Now, dammit." A second later, he whoops. "Jammers for LifeShield communications are live. Move!"

Four troops surge out, rifles spattering out to the line of barricades. Incoming fire returns instantly. Two screens go dark. In  others, the LifeShields spark in sporadic patterns, clearly unable to project fully. A voice screams, "Turn your goddamned jammer off!" Another screen blackens as the men inside reach hands out to pull the bodies inside.

In the corner, a lieutenant turns pale, gasps, "Sir!"

He lights up another screen screen, a YouTube logo clearly visible. The panels there are eerily similar to those arrayed around the war room. A globe, conflict highlighted in searing white. Zooming into 3D map of that entire area, tiny bars of light grow into a composite human eyes could recognize. Sidebars of video, each side a view from every soldier on each side.

A spinning circle of numbers whirls, 10,000 and climbing, showing the number of live viewers. 50,000. 100,000. The LifeShields are feeding their view to the world, and not just each other, and the world is watching.

The president roars. "Mrs. Parks. You are under arrest for treason against the United States of America."