I woke up to the lights in the bunk room turning on. The light burned my eyes as I was roused from sleep. I rubbed my eyes, and hopped out of the bunk. I met the rest of the team in the armory, getting our gear. While checking out our rifles, we had to confirm the serial numbers. Mine was OCP-SR-O523674. For our safety, they gave us ballistic helmets for this job.

  Once we were all squared away, we were taken to the garage, where we mounted up and headed out to the docks. Along the drive, I once more stared out of the windows, watching the skyscrapers melt away and the industrial park grow around us.

  “Anyone else feel like lambs being taken to the slaughter?”, Max asked as we drove.

  “A little bit, Max. A little bit.”, Alex replied.

  “Hey, don't worry, fellas! If yall were lambs, at least you'd be coming in at an affordable price due to all the additives OCP filled you with. Really stretches the meat”, said the driver of police van we were riding in.

  We all simply ignored him, before Alex continued with what he was saying.

  “Frankly I would just have set up a marksman team and the second Vernan comes out, take the shot. I suppose this way, we might be able to do it more stealthily, and maybe prevent stock prices from lowering. Or... At least that's my opinion.”

  “I guess we do have responsibility to the shareholders. Can't shake the market too much”, James joked.

  “Still, it sucks we have to do this in the first place. This Vernan guy seems to be wanting the best for his workers. It's a bit of a shame, really.” I said to the group, resigned to our task.

  “Yeah, but what can ya do? Nobody ever really feels good killing someone. I should know, I was in the Army during the war”, Max said back to me from the front seat.

  “Max, weren't you a medic?”, asked James.

  “A combat medic, James. A combat medic.”

  “I was in the Army too, Max. I was intel. Got to work in the air conditioned tents. From what I understand, you weren't supposed to shoot your weapon. Otherwise you'd lose your protections”, Alex said, in a snarky manner, to Max.

  “Well, next time a Pact sniper team is taking out people trying to drag the wounded to safety, let em know that you're a medic, and see how that works for you. Anyway, a rifle isn't crew served, and it's allowed to be fired in the defense of yourself and your patients. Now if you don't mind, I want to stare out into the night.”

  “Pact?”, I asked?

  “BRICS Pact. We just called em that. Officially it was just Russia, but unoffically, they took volunteers from just about anywhere. Now let me stare out at nothing in peace”, Max reiterated.

  The rest of the drive was spent in a tense silence. We arrived at the northern port, and were driven to a pier, where two other officers were waiting. We stepped out of the SUV, where we saw a small johnboat floating in the water. The lake had a south bound wind, bringing fog into the city.

  “Alright, you must be the team. Here's the boat”, one of the officers stated. “It's not the most sophisticated boat in the world, but it will get you to docks in about an hour or two. We ran test runs the last few days to get the timing down. Oh, as a word of personal advice, don't fall in. You four are significantly more dense, and uhhh.... You don't swim as well as you used to.”

  “Dispatch informed us there was a drone team scouting the area. How do we link into the feed?”, I asked.

  “Yeah, once you're underway and the new drone team cycles in, you can call up dispatch and have them patch you in.”, the other officer replied.

  We thanked the team, and carefully descended the ladder. The boat was just a simple flat bottomed sheet metal boat. It had an electic trawling motor to slowly drag across the lake, with some large batteries to power it. We all took a seat, rifles slung on our backs. Alex took his spot at the controls, and the officers at the pier cut us loose. Afterwards they threw the rope down to us. Alex got the trawling motor started, and we were soon underway.

  The ride was long and cold. I could hear the water lapping at the sides of the boat, the soft drone of the motor, and the quiet whine of electrics. Every so often, a spray of water would crest the side of the boat, hitting my face. I was truly wanting for a towel.

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  The air on the lake kept the boat, and therefore us, terribly cold. The armor sockets were once again ice rods stabbing into my body. I was no longer an armored ant, searching for crumbs in the kitchen. I was now a heat-sink, made to keep the boat as cold as possible. I made a mental note to let the equipment teams know the bodysuit needed insulation badly. I was shivering, wet, and miserable.

  I wasn't the only one suffering. James was shivering, causing the boat to shake ever so slightly.

  The fog was now a double edged sword. We couldn't be seen by anyone on shore, but.... neither could we. I swapped over to thermal vision. It took a moment to adjust to seeing the world as a scale of heat. Short of the three people around me, I saw nothing but blue.

  James tapped my shoulder.

  “Valencia, check out over there”, he said, pointing toward the southern port. “Swap to your thermals, and make sure I'm not going crazy.”

  I zoomed in with my eyes, towards where James had pointed, where I saw the bright red silhouette of a dock worker.

  “Yeah, I see him. I'll call dispatch and get us patched into the drone feed.” I told James.

  “Dispatch, this is Officer Sanford. Mind patching us into that drone footage?”

  “Copy, doing that now”, Daniels replied.

  A few seconds later, a picture in picture frame of the drone footage entered my upper right hand view. I could clearly see the dock worker, standing on the edge of the pier, looking out into the water.

  “Eyes on him. Drone footage confirms it's a member of the Longshoreman's Union. What's the plan?”, I asked the team.

  “Eh, unless he stays there, let him go. Let's avoid doing anything hasty”, Alex answered. “It's easier to move in if nobody goes missing.”

  I kept my eyes on the man as we crept ever closer. He just refused to leave that spot. He wasn't patrolling, or searching for anything. He was just standing there. And that was the problem.

  We were now within a few hundred meters of the docks.

  “Guys, that dock worker hasn't fucking moved from that spot. We're about to be close enough for the fog to no longer hide him. We need to do something about this guy”, I whispered to the team.

  “Fuck”, Alex whispered back, pausing for a few seconds before continuing. “God dammit, take the shot.”

  So much for avoiding casualties. Nothing truly ever goes to plan.

  I shouldered my rifle, and brought up the gun camera. I waited until I could clearly see the dock worker through the fog, and let the gun cam take over aiming. I slowly adjusted my aim, trying to fight the boat rolling with the waves. I matched my breath with the rise and fall of the boat. Up, down, in, out.

  Time seemed to slow as I was squeezing the trigger. The trigger broke at the crest of the wave, sending the cartridge home. The man crumpled in the gun camera, and I saw a multi color spray come from the wound through my eyes. I swapped back to my natural view, not wanting to see the body cool, but seeing the growing pool of blood all the same.

  “Target down”, I said.

  About ten minutes later, we finally arrived at the pier. We drove the boat to a ladder we could climb up, and tied off the boat so we could take it back. We ascended up and onto the pier, where a short ways away we saw the corpse of the dock worker I'd killed. I walked over to get a better look at him.

  He looked to be about my age. I'd gotten Joey cleanly in the head. The bullet passed straight through. A river of blood had poured out of him. His skull was mostly intact. Still, shards of bone and brain matter were everywhere, and he lay here dead. A book was lying next to him, soaked in blood. and the only thing he did wrong was be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The others joined me, and after some deliberation, we tossed his body into the lake. We agreed it's better if he wasn't found, and we assumed he was augmented, so he would stay sunk.

  After tossing him into the lake, we decided we needed a plan to get Vernan, without killing everyone here.