The Military finds their Target

 “Where is that drone going?” The Captain yelled in the temporary war room they requisitioned in a building close to Kensu’s location.

Monitors lined the walls around him showing the status of the troops, their location, the drones' locations, and the live feed of their onboard cameras. Each monitor, each station, was manned by a different operator. Everyone was wearing military fatigues, albeit none wore the exoskeletons of the field troops.

“The drone is flying… right back here, sir!” a blonde drone operator answered.

“What?! Why? Don’t bring it here!”

“Sorry, sir, but it’s out of my hands. Security protocol dictates that if the drone detects a malfunction with its flight equipment or attempted tampering, it will return to its command center. I believe the target’s joyride qualifies as both for the machine.”

“What, so the target is going to land on the roof?” the Captain pulled out his side gun and reached to grab a stun baton. “Everyone, get ready fo-“

“No, sir! Due to the extra weight, they will likely undershoot the roof.”

“So it’s going to crash against the wall?”

The room shook with a loud thud. The Captain turned around, following the sound of broken glass. A black-haired man wearing a slightly burnt jacket was kneeling on the ground among a myriad of shards. The target had arrived.

“No, sir, I think he’ll crash against the window.”

The black-haired man looked around the room. The Captain locked eyes with him. There was a small moment of silence. The room shook slightly as a train passed just under the now-destroyed window.

“ON YOUR KNEES!” The Captain raised his gun. The target looked down with a puzzled expression on his face.

“I believe he is already on his knees, sir.”

“Don’t give me that sass, you know what I mean. Hands on top of your head, NOW!”

“No,” the target replied, standing to his feet.

“What, are you dumb? Do it, or I’ll shoot you!”

“No, you won’t,” the black-haired man replied. “Why don’t we take a moment to calm down and talk things through? I don’t want to hurt you.”

The black-haired began walking sideways across the room. The Captain kept his gun fixed at him. He gave the blonde corporal a little discreet kick and a nudge without taking his eyes off the target. She nodded and reached for the hidden alarm underneath her workstation.

The Captain could not take a guy who tanks rubber bullets with only his stun baton, grit, and a backup of desk jockeys. But, reinforcements were on their way. All he had to do was stall.

“Fine, let’s talk… what are your terms of surrender?”

“Oh, I won’t surrender, but I am curious to know why you are playing with kid’s gloves after trying to kill me back in the lab.”

“I could ask the same thing. You killed three soldiers yesterday, and now you want to talk?”

“I …know you aren’t going to believe me, but I didn’t kill anyone. And even if I did, it was self-defense. Your guys shot first!”

“Corporal’s Ken magazine was full, he fired not a single bullet that day. You were the one that shot him through the eye.”

“I didn’t-“

“No, sorry, you are right. You didn’t, but the little cyber-menace on your spine did. You are full of tricks, aren’t you? Shame you don’t put them to use for the good guys.”

The target stopped pacing around the room right in front of the same broken window he crashed into. “Ah, that’s it. I have the last of the Professor’s projects on my body. This isn’t about cleaning loose ends, you want your research back, and you can’t have it without killing me! You want the Augmented Soldier Genome!”

The Captain glanced at the screen next to him. Reinforcements were driving down the block. They would be there before long.

“Eh, you are half right,” he shrugged. “But seriously, if we don’t take you in, the Bureau will kill you. So, why don’t you join us voluntarily? We might have some good old-fashioned lab work for you to do.”

“Developing bio-weapons, you mean.”

“For the greater good.”

“I heard this before. I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now, Sergeant.”

“Captain, actually.”

“Whatever. Sorry, but my assistant tells me that my train has arrived, so we’ll have to resume our little chat some other time.” With a little hand wave, Kensu jumped out the window.

“No!” the Captain chased after him, but too late. He had fallen into… a hovertrain? The Target had timed his leap to fall right on the top of the Downtown line as it passed out the window. He gave the officer a sarcastic wave as he disappeared down the block. “What are you all waiting for? After him! Send the drones!”

The operators all sprang back to action, coordinating the squads to follow the train while remotely piloting the drones to follow the target. As everyone got to work, the Captain holstered his gun.

That Augmented Soldier thing really was something. The target crashed across a window with nary a cut on him and survived falling several floors like it was nothing. They weren’t going to capture him playing nice. Maybe it was better to let off the kid’s gloves.

“Got eyes on him,” the blonde drone operator called out. The screen in front of the Captain showed a camera feed from a done, showing the majestic white magnetic train soaring over Downtown Park, a stowaway sitting on its roof. “Should I… intercept, sir?”

“Not yet. Pull back the drones. Try to keep them out of sight and don’t engage until I say so. Send a squad to the Solar Express yard and tell them to be ready to intercept.”

“Roger.”

“Shouldn’t we send a squad to the next station in case he wants to get off the train with the rest of the passengers?”

“No… just to Solar Express for the time being.”

The Captain stared at the map. The target was a man who jumped from buildings as if he jumped out of a comic book panel. Train stops were mere suggestions to him. He could get off wherever he wanted.

But, jumping into a busy district would be too… notorious. The Bureau would be onto him in no time at all, which meant the target was probably going to wait at least until he crossed the emptier Industrial district, where he could make a better getaway.

A few more tense moments passed as everyone in the room tracked the target’s position. The Captain watched the screen in silence, glowering at the three blurry pixels that were his Target pacing around the top of the train. “Come on, bastard, don’t jump off just yet.”

The blurry target seemed to stare right at the camera, but from that distance, only a hawk should be able to spot the drone. No way even a genetic freak like him could see it, right? ...Ah, but it wasn’t only the genetic freak they had to watch out for.

“Communications with the drones is masked and encrypted, right?”

“Yes sir, our communications are encrypted.”

“So, no one can detect or hijack our signal?”

“They would need specialized antennas to even detect our signals, and It would take a quantum computer to crack our encryption and hack our drones if that’s what you are worried about… err, sir!”

The Captain leaned against the wall. That was good. Even if the late professor had somehow managed to create a next-gen AI, without the proper hardware, it could not do anything.

The Captain kept staring at the feed and the map until the train reached the destination he wanted. “There, he reached the intersection, attack!”

“Err, attack how, sir? Want me to fire live rounds at the train?”

“No, we can’t risk any collateral damage. Bring your drones down and ram him off the train!”

“Ram him?! Aye-aye captain, back to the Age of Sail we go.”

The feed on the screen showed the drone swooping in towards a somewhat distracted target. But, at the last second, the black-haired man turned around and managed to dodge the first drone, albeit he wasn’t as lucky with the second.

The Target was pushed out of the train and landed straight in the automated storage yard of Solar Express. The black-haired man was stuck in a maze of containers, with no one around but the small delivery drones flying all around the yard… and the squad of spec-op soldiers waiting for his arrival.

The Captain had him right where he wanted. It was time to spring the trap.