Chapter 201 - EVO

***Tirnanog, Mount Aerie***

***Daman Salb***

I listened carefully to the latest report on the kind of opposition we might encounter during the upcoming mission. The more we knew about the targets beforehand, the better things would go.

A very likely scenario was the parents, and it looked like they would be a particularly tough problem when it came to making a clean getaway. Nobody harboured the illusion that we could run away from two speedsters with such a high combat potential. Individual operatives might have unique capabilities that would let them escape, but the team as a whole would be harassed to death if we didn't account for those two factors.

So, we either had to neutralise them from the start, or wait till they weren’t around. Given their reportedly high resistance to poisons of any kind, going with the first option would be hard. Thankfully, we got the intelligence from an earlier hit-squad which had failed to take care of the father some months ago.

The commander tapped his pencil onto the table while he glared at the report lying in front of him with a sour expression. The guy wasn’t used to being told off when it came to his subordinates.

Turning his attention to one of the psychics across the table, he tapped the report once more. “What were you doing till now? How could you not find any weakness in the target!? You had two weeks, and this reads as if all you have been doing is drinking while watching the target!”

The psychic in question was one of our best men when it came to scouting and information gathering.

The scientists who were in charge of his enhancements had managed to take one of the Tirnanogian mutations and improve it a hundred-fold. Not only could the man sense danger like no other, it practically allowed him a partial glimpse into alternate futures. Whether he had true visions of what might be, or whether his brain was so jacked up that it could calculate future events based on the input it received in the present, it wasn’t certain.

In all honesty, it didn’t matter much in practise. At least to us. Just by being near the target, the man could scout out their abilities and find the most optimal countermeasures to certain mutations. It was a true cheat ability as long as we had enough time for information gathering.

“I’ve been doing my best,” the psychic replied, sounding quite annoyed. “But they must have some sort of resistance to my ability.”

The commander shook his head. “Explain the problem. Can it be taken care of if we give you more time?”

The psychic shrugged, then shook his head. “Take Magnus. I have been trailing that psycho for days. Whenever he was out in public, I was there as soon as one of the lookouts informed me. You all know how my ability works. It’s by no means perfect. The predicted future changes with the present circumstances.”

He gestured helplessly with his hands. “Normally, there is a preferred way for people to react to certain stimuli when they are attacked. There is a…” He searched for the right way to explain it. “A pattern! If I run a scenario fifty or even a hundred times, the target will react the same in most of the attempts as long as I don’t change too many things about my mode of attack. For example, I could try an unarmed attack, or threaten them with a certain weapon. And for the most part, they will react similarly to a given set of circumstances.”

Then he suddenly threw up his hands in frustration. “But not with this person. No matter how often I run him through the same scenario, he always stays unpredictable. There are almost no repeated reactions. It is as if I am trying to analyse wildly different people.”

The man’s left eye started to twitch uncontrollably. “One time he fights like a madman, even using random passers-by as an improvised shield. Then he fights normally, though slightly different in each encounter. Usually, I can at least point out a preferred direction in which the target tends to dodge, but it is always a coin-flip with this guy. And another time, he just runs away and drops some sort of grenade. When he does that, the vision always ends immediately!”

He shuddered at reliving that particular scenario. “It is as if he is totally chaotic!”

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The commander clicked his tongue. “So your only recommendation is to use one of the psychics to put him in timeout?”

The psychic nodded vehemently. “I am done with dying simulated deaths! Either we wait till he is not at the compound, or we use the psychics.”

The commander pressed his eyelids together, clearly not liking the second option. “We have only three psychics who are capable of mental attacks. Given the amount of powerful people at the compound, I would like to use them only for unforeseen circumstances.”

He shook his head. “And what about the mother?”

Shrugging, the psychic didn’t show any more enthusiasm than with the first question. “That one is more predictable, at least, but it doesn’t help much if I am too weak to survive her first attack. For some reason, she always manages to pick me out of the crowd first. I don’t get how she does it.”

“And what happens then?” one of the other men who had joined the meeting asked.

The twitching of the psychic’s left eye intensified. “What do you mean, what happens then? She is a speedster, and I am not. One moment, she is where she is, the next, she is right in front of me and…”

He drew his thumb across his throat in a gesture that was hard to misunderstand.

The commander sighed and slapped his hand onto the table. “It seems like more observations won’t get us anywhere with those two. Unless anyone thinks that further delays might improve our chance of success, I would evaluate the next window of opportunity and proceed with the plan. Does anyone have further input that is relevant to the mission before we proceed?”

I reluctantly raised my hand and waited till the commander nodded, permitting me to speak. Long years as a special operative had taught me that getting any kind of attention was bad, but withholding information was worse.

“Just a few hours before this meeting, we burned one of the Forgotten sympathisers we had left in the clan. I visited the drop-off point which we used previously for transferring documents. The contact showed up as agreed, but he only dropped off the signal that there was nothing new to report.”

I drew in a breath. “When he tried to leave, he was confronted by several individuals who had apparently been trailing him. Following protocol, I eliminated him before they could capture him. Then I escaped.”

The commander nodded and interlaced his fingers thoughtfully. “How did the pursuers look?”

“Random civilian clothing. Nothing indicated any special affiliation with one of the military stratas,” I replied shortly, allowing the commander to draw his own conclusions.

“The 12th, 13th and 15th would have likely been recognisable. Especially when showing up in force,” he mused.

I nodded slowly.

The 12th strata was in charge of hunting and special operations. While they were undoubtedly capable of tracking someone while staying unseen, it was unlikely for them to do so while camouflaging themselves as civilians. The 12th was the clan’s hammer, the elite they brought in when a problem needed to be crushed with prejudice. The fact that we were planning to raid their headquarters already made this mission as problematic as it could be.

We considered several times whether attacking the targets at their school was the better choice, but that area stood under even more rigorous control. Given that the offspring of several stratas were assembled in the same place, the clan's security measures were above anything reasonable, with several dozen guards on permanent watch. It was either the 12th's compound, where we would have to deal with highly capable fighters, but in small numbers. The other choice was having a small army on our trail as soon as we entered their school. Not to mention that, given the school's positioning at the central pillar, every combat-capable reinforcement in the entire living cavern would be quick to join in. There was no way we could cause a scene there and not have to fight our way through the entire clan on the way out.

But I was straying from the topic at hand. Similar arguments could be made for the 13th, who were in charge of executing and upholding the clan’s law, and the 15th, who represented the clan’s naval power. Neither of those groups was incapable of such an operation, but it was unlikely for them to do so while pretending to be civilians.

It also wasn’t their primary mission to keep an eye on their population and to watch out for internal problems. Which left…

“It’s the third strata,” a woman at the table concluded. “If their intelligence wing is onto us, we are on a clock. How likely is it that they already know what we are planning?”

“Unlikely,” I replied. “But they will turn over every stone after I killed the contact.”

“Do we have confirmation that it was them?” someone asked.

“I wasn’t stupid enough to return to the scene or to go anywhere near the contact’s operation,” I replied, feeling slightly miffed. “If one of their elders happened to show up and catch wind of us, the whole mission would become impossible.”

The commander massaged his left temple. “If they knew that the contact was a Forgotten sympathiser, and they intentionally left them alive to be watched, then they know that something is up. At the very least, they will raise their level of readiness and put more people in the field to find out what’s going on.”

For a few long moments, nobody said anything.

It took a while, but eventually the commander decided on a course of action. “We will stop using outside sources to gather information. It’s unlikely to get much more than we already have anyway. If the Aerie intentionally left former Forgotten sympathisers alive to be watched, then any more contact with them is a risk of exposing the whole mission. We will also move everything into position to make use of the next window of opportunity.”