July 2076
Constitutional Convention
Chicago, Central Territory
United States of America

“We’ve got weapons in the crowd, eight o’clock. Conventional small arms and RPGs are confirmed, over!” Alex heard Blake shout through the radio. “Yari, your team stays inside with the civilians. Church, Dozer, Revere, get your teams out here now!”

Shawn gave Alex a worried look as he hurried outside with his team. The explosions had been noticed by the crowd of delegates, but it was the mass exodus of armed guards leaving towards the front of the chamber that caused the panic to start. Yoshito motioned for Alex to join him near the stage, even as the captain climbed up to the podium where the President and Vice President were frantically trying to get the hundreds in the audience to calm down.

“May I have your attention,” Yoshito shouted, his voice firm but not threatening. He was drowned out the another explosion that rattled the building and shattered a few of the windows high up on the ceiling. Glass rained down onto the panicking delegates, sending many into fits of hysterical shrieking. “Scope, Gemini, I want you up at the front doors. Don’t let anyone out and if you see anyone from Pride, get them in here to back us up.”

“Copy that, on our way,” Cassie said through her radio. Alex clicked a confirmation and started making his way up the side aisle towards the door. He was halfway up the walkway when he noticed something swaying outside the window from the corner of his eye. He glanced up and saw ropes hanging down from the roof. Then figured slid down past the windows toward the ground.

“We’ve got Pride members coming down toward the side emergency exit,” Alex said into his mic.

“Let them in, we need as many people here as we can get to guard the delegates,” Yoshito shouted. “Gemini, new plan. I want you -”

He never finished his sentence as the emergency door Alex was headed towards exploded inward. Shrapnel and debris rained down on the crowd and Alex saw at least ten of the delegates nearest the blast lay dead on the ground. He counted his lucky stars he had still been twenty feet away and completely to the side, but his head rang from the shock nonetheless.  He shook his head twice to clear it and was confronted by a terrifying sight.

Ten black clad gunmen flooded through the gaping hole in the building. The delegates were now in full panic as they frantically flooded towards the front doors, which had somehow become mysteriously locked. Alex felt his stomach twist as he examined the first gunman who headed directly for the stage where Yoshito and several of the others on the team stood guarding the President. Then man was dressed identically to Alex and the rest of his team, in official Lionheart Security garb, but he wore a mask to hide his identity.

The rest of the small team fanned out. Two of them raised their weapons at Alex, who raised his own weapon, now acutely aware of just how dangerous the situation was. Alex glanced over his shoulder and saw Cassie was confronting her own pair of gunmen. But his attention was quickly drawn to the stage where Yoshito stood facing the lead gunman, weapon simply hanging by his side.

“I don’t know who you are, but we have men outside and above you. Whatever your plan was, it won’t work,” Yoshito said defiantly. Then he clicked his radio over to a separate frequency. “Delta Team, we have hostiles inside the -” He stopped mid sentence and Alex felt the twist in his stomach worsen as he realized why at the same time. Yoshitos radio call echoed out of the helmets of the team that now faced them down. 

“We don’t want to hurt any of you gentlemen,” said the leader of the group. He stepped toward Yoshito and removed his mask. “In fact, we need you alive for this little charade we are about to put on.”

Alex’s eyes widened in shock as watched Richard Malwood bring up his rifle and smash the stock into Yoshito’s face.  Yoshito had the presence of mind to duck but he wasn’t expecting the tranquilizer dart that lanced out from across the room and took him in the side. Alex gaped as he looked for the gunman. He felt sick as he saw Cassie lower her rifle and load another dart into the chamber, he face cold and calm as she jacked the next round into the chamber of her rifle. The two gunmen who had had their weapons trained on him now pointed their rifles at the delegates who stood in mute fear. She raised the rifle and Alex watched the barrel turn towards him.

“I’m so sorry Scope, I didn’t want to have to do this,” she said quietly through the radio.

“Me too,” Alex replied, as he watched with detached fascination as the dart leapt from the barrel of her rifle. Her shot, however, came too late as Alex dodged aside, striking the two men who had been watching the exchange. They fell in a heap and Alex lashed out with a closed right fist, catching the gunman closest to him in the temple. The man ceased struggling and Alex took the opportunity to make a dash for the hole in the wall that had been the door. 

As he crawled away, Alex felt a hand wrap around his right ankle. Without looking he slammed his left foot back towards the other gunman and was rewarded with a crunch as the hard heel of his boot hammered the man’s face. The grip instantly released and Alex threw himself through the hole in the wall and out through the shattered windows.

“I’m on him,” he heard Cassie say through his radio and was thankful that she hadn’t bothered to switch it off of their shared channel. Her voice popped into his earpiece again, saying, “Please don’t run, Scope. It’s only going to make things harder than they have to be.”

Alex didn’t bother with a reply as he regained his feet and sprinted full speed out into the gardens that surrounded the complex. He heard more explosions as he raced across the clean, cropped lawns. As he searched for signs of anyone else who might have made it out, Alex finally caught his first glimpse of the damage outside.

Fires raged across the city and he realized this wasn’t just a hostile takeover of the convention. He watched in horror as artillery shells rained down from the sky, their original source still a mystery. Jets screeched across the sky, firing rockets and dropping bombs onto buildings that clearly had no military interest whatsoever.

“You can’t escape, Scope,” he heard Cassie say. Her voice wasn’t crackling through the radio. She had caught up to him. “Just come with me. You have to trust me.”

“Trust you?” he laughed, facing his onetime friend with a rueful grin. “You just put a dart into our Captain’s neck and tried to shoot me with one too.”

“I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, but you have to trust me, Alex, please,” she pleaded, dropping all pretenses of their operational call signs, but to no avail.

“I’m sorry you can’t tell me more either, Cassie,” Alex replied, catching movement behind her but not focusing on it. “I’m sorry you can’t tell me why you betrayed me.”

“I’ll tell you soon, Alex. I promise. But you have to come with me first,” she said. Alex could see sorrow in her eyes, but he didn’t believe it for a second. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. Let me bring you in, you’re the one they want.”

“I don’t know what they want or what they promised you if you got me. But it’s about to get a lot harder than you think,” Alex said, as he watched Shawn stand up from a bush behind Cassie and lob a small canister toward her. “At least it is for you, Gemini.”

Alex covered his ears just in time to avoid the deafening blast of the flash-bang grenade as it detonated mere feet behind Cassie. She screamed in pain and dropped her rifle, clutching her ears as she writhed on the ground. Alex sprinted to where her gun lay. He picked the weapon up, made sure the dart was still loaded, aimed, and fired it into Cassie’s leg. The dart was small and only penetrated half an inch, but it was enough that within seconds she was motionless and unconscious.

“Thanks, guys,” Alex said to his approaching friends. He tossed the weapon away into the brush. Shawn and Jimmy kept their weapons at the ready. The three were still in the relative openness of the park, but the bushes and trees mostly obscured them from view of the conference center.

“I didn’t want to throw it,” Shawn said, obviously as troubled by Cassie’s betrayal as Alex was.

“Why did she want you, Alex,” Jimmy asked, staring at their former comrade’s motionless form on the ground.

“No idea, but I’m not waiting around to find out,” Alex replied. “Did anyone else make it out of the conference center?”

“Semtex, Church, and some of the others at the front managed to get to one of the APCs. They are headed to the airport now to try and rendezvous with the VAULT. He told everyone else over the radio to get out of the city as best we could when those Pride guys came down from the roof. They shot Whale, Nerf, and Rex.” 

Alex could hear the anger in Shawn’s voice. The three he mentioned were all part of his heavy weapons team, including Rory ‘Rex’ Jones, one of the officers Alex had met upon first arriving in Monterey.. Alex quickly relayed what had happened inside to his friends. Shawn shook his head and Jimmy looked scared and worried. 

“This is bad, man,” Shawn said, worry and fear creeping into his voice. “We need to get whatever weapons and supplies we can and head out now.”

“You guys try to get out and rendezvous with the Commander and the rest of the team,” Alex said, holding up a hand toward Shawn who immediately protested what he knew Alex was suggesting. “Cassie seemed very intent on getting me, in case you couldn’t tell. The way Sebastian’s dad looked at me, the fact that they would bother to send Cassie out after me, it means something and I need to find out what.”

“What are you going to do, Alex?” Jimmy asked. Shawn was still fuming at the idea of the three splitting up, but he kept quiet.

“I’ll draw them off, so you guys can slip out and try to make contact with the others,” Alex replied, as he pulled out a pen and paper from one of the pockets on his cargo pants. He scribbled a few words onto the first page, tore it off, and tucked it into the front pocket of Cassie’s jacket. “This note should keep them searching.”

“What’s it say?” Jimmy asked.

“It says I know who they work for and why they betrayed us,” Alex said matter-of-factly.

“You do?” Shawn asked, looking more confused than angry.

“Of course not, but they don’t know that I don’t know,” Alex said. 

He found himself grinning at his mischief, despite the now approaching sounds of gunfire and explosions. Jimmy and Shawn both paused a moment before they joined him smiling. The three shared a brief laugh as they said their goodbyes. 

“Take care of yourselves and we’ll see eachother soon,” he said. “I’ll contact you when I’ve shaken their lead.”

“See you soon, Scope,” Shawn said. “Give ‘em hell.”

“See you at the rally point,” Jimmy replied, though he didn’t sound very convinced. Alex couldn’t blame him.

“If I’m not there in three days, you leave without me, understood?” Alex said as he gathered his gear. The others just nodded. Alex slung his rifle over his shoulder then came to a rigid salute. The other two mirrored his action, then they nodded as one and split off in opposite directions.

* * *

Six hours after parting ways with Shawn and Jimmy, Alex jogged through the deserted streets of Chicago. He didn’t know exactly how far he had travelled in the past few hours, but he judged no more than about five miles from the convention center. He had deliberately moved in the opposite direction from the airport, knowing it was unlikely he would be able to approach by himself, not with the hundreds of foreign troops he knew now populated the city.

The run from the Convention Center was perilous. Alex hid on several occasions as squads of soldiers bustled past, rushing to secure some position or another in the city. With the scale of the attack, he had figured it must be some kind of international blitz, maybe like the nation-building attacks the United States had been part of back when his grandfather had been in the Army. Alex had heard stories of western countries going into smaller nations to remove their dictators and install friendly governments. 

His father had once told him that that sort of action had all stopped after an attempt to install a new government in Pakistan had ended in the regime detonating a nuclear device in the center of the capital. It had killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and the United States Army alone had lost nearly six thousand soldiers from either the blast or radiation sickness. Now it seemed like the tables were turning on America.

The city was in chaos as Alex ran down streets littered with car wrecks and shattered glass. He passed a large storefront where looters were busy ransacking a jewelry store. He ignored the petty theft. With an attack this big, a robbery probably wasn’t the worst thing in store for the owners of the shop. As he moved further north into the heart of the city, he noticed fewer and fewer civilians running through the streets. What he saw more of, however, troubled him. Bodies littered the streets. Some with wounds or bleeding cuts, but most with no obvious sign of a violent death.

Trampled to death trying to escape like everyone else, he thought in disgust. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind, knowing there was nothing to be done for those poor souls. Instead, he focused on the task at hand, and on the other information he was gathering as he penetrated deeper into the burning city.

The most noticing aspect of the attack on Chicago was that nearly all the soldiers present bore only the flag of Canada on their shoulders. He had seen a few Mexican squads and even one Cuban squad, but there was no evidence of any Asian or European forces present. He shrugged it off as he focused on the task at hand, assuming that the Europeans were likely attacking the East Coast and the Asians the West Coast, if they were even involved at all. Either way, that was out of his control.

As he crouched in between the charred remains of two crashed cars, Alex heard the telltale crunching of a vehicle driving over the litter in the streets. He ducked down to a prone position and watched as an APC slowly rolled past the street he was on. He held his breath, praying silently that they didn’t stop. His pulse quickened as the personnel carrier ground to a halt and the back door dropped open. Five figured exited the vehicle and Alex caught his breath. The first two were unknown to Alex, but the other three he knew only too well.

“Let’s move out. The tracker signal died around here somewhere, but he can’t be far,” Cassie shouted to the other four. She looked a little groggy from Alex’s vantage point, but the fact that she was up and searching made him wonder how effective the tranquilizer had actually been.

“I don’t take orders from you, princess,” sneered the young man closest to Cassie. Jeremy Reaves spit on the ground in front of her. “I don’t trust you further than I can throw you.”

“Shut up, Jeremy. She would kill you before you could get within three feet of her,” Sebastian said, a mixture of annoyance and humor in his voice. “Let’s just find him and bring him in. Dad won’t be too happy if we lose him.”

“Jeremy, sweetie, when I give you an order, I expect it to be followed without you throwing a hissy fit,” Cassie said with mock sweetness as she approached Jeremy. 

With lightning speed, she closed the five feet between them. She drew both of her side arms, XT51 semi-automatic pistols she must have acquired during his trek through the city. The pistol in her right hand flash up so that the barrel rested lightly under Jeremy’s chin while the left drifted down to a far more precious area of his anatomy. “Understood?”

Jeremy gulped once, then pushed down his alarm and smiled. He moved to push Cassie’s guns away, but instead of lowering her weapons, Cassie whipped the weapon in a backhanded strike that caught him across the cheek. Jeremy reeled and collapsed onto the charred pavement, yelping in pain. 

“I asked you if you understood?” she shouted louder at him.

“Understood,” Jeremy grumbled as he wiped blood from the gash to his face. “But I won’t forget this.”

“I don’t care if you get it tattooed backwards on your chest so you can see it every day when you wake up, get out there and start searching,” Cassie barked. 

Alex was both impressed and afraid by this new change in his friend’s personality.

Former friend, Alex, don’t forget what she did to Yari and the others, he silently reminded himself. 

He watched from his position on the ground as the group spread out, thankfully in every direction but towards him. He glanced around, looking for a way out. The streets were empty and he knew that any movement would be easily noticed by the search party. As he looked around, Alex found himself gazing up at the building to his back. It was tall, more than fifty stories. The top third of the building was still under construction from the barren look of the pillars and the large crane that seemed to hang precariously over the edge. The perfect place to wait them out.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Alex made sure the team was still looking everywhere but at him as he carefully crept, still in a crouched position, up the sidewalk towards the entrance of the building. Confidant they were looking in the other buildings, he sprinted the last several feet and slipped quietly through what had once been framed glass doors. They had been shattered by the artillery shelling, and he carefully avoided the jagged pieces of glass around the edges. The last thing he needed was a bleeding cut with no access to medical treatment.

Alex climbed the seemingly endless staircases, making his way as quickly as possible towards the upper floors of the building. For a moment, he wondered why he was even staying in his position. Going up a building with a search party looking for you on the ground wasn’t the smartest idea in the world. They now stood between him and his only escape routes. 

No, you have to capture one of them. It’s the only way to find out what’s going on, he scolded himself and forces his legs to keep climbing the stairs.

As he passed the sixteenth floor, he paused and ventured out of the stairwell. He now stood on the first of the top floors that had still been under construction. Knowing he would be easily seen from this height by anyone on the ground, Alex slowly crawled towards the edge of the building. He approached the edge and found himself staring out over the city. Smoke rose from hundreds of buildings, but the lack of continued explosions indicated most of the bombardment had stopped. Supply planes descended towards the various large and small airports in the area and he could see patrol helicopters sweeping across the city, rooting out any remaining opposition. It would take a while, but Alex knew with certainty that the city would fall sooner, rather than later. And judging by the scale of the damage, this attack wasn’t mean to occupy the city. This attack was meant to destroy it utterly, a level of destruction not seen in modern warfare in over a century.

Focusing back on the task at hand, Alex belly-crawled to the edge of the building and peered over.  The APC was gone, though Alex doubted they had left the area. Still, this was the time to try and see if he could pull off his plan. He slowly slid back from the edge of the building and proceeded up the next three flights of stairs. The surrounding buildings were no more than 15 stories high - Alex had inadvertently picked the tallest one on the block. Four extra stories would insure that he had more than enough of a height advantage over anyone approaching the building. He reached the landing and mimicked his last approach to the edges of the structure, this time with his weapon in hand. Reaching the edge, he positioned himself behind a pane of some sort of plastic or acrylic material, hoping it was bullet proof. 

Won’t matter much if it isn’t, he thought with grim humor as he adjusted his scope. Time to put this plan into action.

“Gemini, this is Scope, come in, over,” he said into his headset. With no response, he tapped the communication channel control on his sleeve and opened the transmission up to all channels. He repeated the call again.

“This is Gemini, glad to hear you’re still with us, Scope,” Cassie replied over the radio. “Are you ready to stop running, yet?”

“This is between you and me, now. Tell your friends to leave and come get me yourself,” Alex said crisply, forcing emotion from his voice. “It was your job after all, wasn’t it?” 

There was a pause on the other end. Alex smiled. He had hit a nerve and everyone listening in knew it.

“Alright, Scope, let’s duel,” she finally replied.

“Your move, Gemini,” he said as he moved to turn off his radio. “Come and get me.”

Next Chapter: Ch. 15 - Inside Job