Controlled Paradise

Chapter 8: Where They Begin

Marcus Reins had not truly slept in twenty years — and had learned to live with it.

He stood behind the meter-thick armored glass of the upper gallery and looked down at the training ground, where twelve black silhouettes waited by the doors into an artificial nightmare. On his bracelet, the simulation interface glowed: Threat Density, Spawn Rate, Aggression. Everything at standard values. For now.

— Simulation ready. Parameters standard, — Oreon said.

— Run it.

The doors below opened. Behind them, another world unfolded — red dust, black sand, fragments of alien architecture, a burgundy sky with clouds that moved incorrectly. The twelve entered.

— Formation, — Max said below. One word.

Reins began counting to himself. He always counted — not a habit, but a way not to feel.

The group spread out instantly. Snipers to high ground. Heavy firepower in the center. Vanguard forward. Drones into the air. Recon ahead. Command center behind.

— Six seconds, — the officer beside him said.

— I see.

Six. Special units took nine. Standard groups — fifteen. These did it in six. The first time. Without rehearsal. Reins did not change his expression, but inside him something that had been silent for twenty years quietly leaned forward.

Movement began under the black sand. One. Three. Seven. Multi-legged burgundy creatures that did not run, but leapt — from smoke, from behind stones, from nowhere.

And CHIEF answered like a single organism.

Reins saw it not as a battle, but as data. The sniper pair from above mowed down jumpers in midair — a two-degree adjustment, three more fall. The machine gunners in the center made a wall of fire, a corridor no one would pass through. The drone imitated the cry of a wounded creature, and the beasts threw themselves at the sound, into emptiness, into a trap. The kill counter rose faster than Reins had allowed for.

— Four hundred percent of the level-three indicator, — the officer said. — In eighty seconds.

Reins looked at his interface. Ran a finger across it.

THREAT DENSITY: MODERATE → HIGH. SPAWN RATE: +50%

— General, you…

— I want to see where they begin to fail.

He said it evenly. Without cruelty. He needed to know not how good they were when everything was fine — everyone can do that. He needed to know where the crack in them was. Because where he intended to send them, people are not sent for how they hold up under normal conditions.

Twice as many creatures poured out from beneath the sand.

And then the thing happened for which Reins leaned closer to the glass.

A jumper went for the back of the heavy machine gunner from a blind zone. Between them was the analyst, who would not have time to fire himself. Reins heard one word in the open channel — calm, without panic:

— Bullet.

And the analyst did not turn around. He already knew what would happen.

A shot from above. Past the machine gunner's head, fingers from the analyst's shoulder, straight into the jumper's eye in midair. The creature fell dead one step from the giant's back.

The sniper did not even change his breathing.

— You just shot through me, — the machine gunner said into the channel.

— Past you.

— Difference?

— Two centimeters. I do not round.

And the giant below burst out laughing — and returned to the machine gun. Reins watched how, between these people, in eight seconds, something was born that other groups needed years for. Trust, proven by a bullet faster than any words.

The group's ammunition was dropping. Reins saw the numbers: forty percent, thirty. And heard how below, instead of panicking, the commander quietly shifted the whole group to sniper discipline — not a single blind shot, fire only at confirmed targets. Expenditure slowed. They were not breaking. They were compacting.

— Raise it again? — the officer asked.

Reins looked down for a long time. At the twelve. At the losses — zero. At the efficiency going off the scale.

— No, — he said at last. — Enough.

A pause.

— I saw what I wanted.

The last jumper fell. The red sky became gray, the black sand — a black floor. Dust settled in the air, and in it stood the twelve, breathing heavily. The final statistics hung in Reins's interface:

UNIT CHIEF / EFFICIENCY 720% / SURVIVAL 100% / PROTOCOL DEVIATIONS 11

Eleven protocol deviations. Another general would have crossed the group out for half of them. Reins looked at those eleven as at eleven reasons why they had survived.

In the channel below, someone laughed. Then someone else. Oreon, according to its protocol, quietly released classical music into all headsets — calm, slow. And under it, twelve broken loners who that morning had still been strangers to one another laughed together in the dust, drowning out Oreon's fines with jokes. For the first time. All twelve.

— General, — the officer said. — You wanted to see where they begin to fail. Did you?

Reins did not tear his gaze away. From the commander. From the laughter being born out of the place where fear had just been.

— No, — he said. — I saw where they begin.

He headed for the exit. Half a step later, he stopped.

— Oreon. Record in my private dossier. "It is them."

— Recorded.

He left. And already knew what he would do next — and knew it would look like betrayal. Somewhere above, they were preparing a mission for which they were assembling the correct, safe, lying picture. And he had just found twelve people who would tear any picture apart by the very fact of their existence.

He intended to slip his own into this mission. Not the three written-off ones they had asked for. Five of the best from CHIEF — and the commander they had never managed to break. Let the pretty picture split at the seams.

The gallery emptied. But in the corner remained a small active holoprojection. A face.

Vance.

No one had given him a command to review this simulation. But he had access. He always had access.

He did not look at the statistics. He looked at one single moment — the one when the commander took the sword into his hands and his hand trembled. Vance played this moment back. Twice. Three times. A frozen frame: a trembling hand on the hilt.

He read Reins's phrase in his private dossier — "It is them" — and smiled. But the smile was not joyful. This is how one smiles when one has recognized the needed instrument.

— Yes, — he said quietly, to himself. — It really is them.

He looked once more at the trembling hand.

— And he still remembers. Good.

The holoprojection went out.