Once, I watched a documentary about the nature of genius and what makes masterpieces possible. The filmmakers spent a great deal of time exploring how history's greatest artists and scientists pushed the limits of their minds with the help of various psychoactive substances. The documentary advanced an intriguing idea: on a subconscious level, the human brain almost always knows the right answer to any problem, but rigid biological filters and the limitations of everyday perception keep us from reaching those ready-made solutions.
I did not know whether that theory held true for the bohemian elite and the great minds of the past, but I now knew one thing about my own physiology with absolute certainty: if the algorithm behind [Special Command] was theoretically possible, my body would solve it on its own. It would tap into methods, resources, and layers of motor memory that I had never even realized existed.
[Special Command: Advance along designated vector. Eliminate threats and neutralize enemy traps at maximum operational efficiency.]
The world around me collapsed into a narrow tactical corridor in the blink of an eye. The suffocating alien heat disappeared. The sweat running beneath my combat suit, the relentless itching, the distant voices of the platoon, all of it faded away. My entire reality narrowed to the jungle, an enormous field of variables that had to be stripped of ambushes and hidden hazards as quickly as possible.
Objective accepted. Everything else became background noise.
My legs launched me forward, instantly accelerating to the fastest speed the terrain would allow. Even if my lungs protested the brutal pace, I did not notice. My body's pain and fatigue receptors had been temporarily suppressed.
It felt like watching an action movie through my own eyes, where I was both the audience and the lead actor. My head swept from side to side with metronomic precision, catching the slightest irregularity in the angle of a branch, the density of a bush, or the bend of a blade of grass. At the same time, my arms moved independently, like trained snakes striking at every potential threat. Broad, flat sheets of compressed S-Power slid from my palms one after another with a dry whisper.
These were nothing like the kinetic blasts I normally used to smash boulders and Loz'an skulls. The transparent planes simply crushed the purple undergrowth and left deep dents in the bark of alien trees. I had only seen an effect like this once before, during the early stages of mastering S-Power bullets, when the projectiles had not yet detonated and instead delivered a powerful burst of pressure before dissipating into the air. It had never occurred to me that, after mastering the technique, I could deliberately revert to that crude earlier version. Even less had I imagined using it as an engineering reconnaissance tool to scan the terrain.
My subconscious was not some mystical inner voice or an ancient sage whispering advice. It functioned like a high-performance supercomputer. In microseconds, it tore through more than thirty years of memories, sifted through mountains of mental clutter, and pulled out exactly the fragments of experience that fit the situation perfectly.
One energy plate slammed into the purple carpet of grass, and instead of merely flattening it, the vegetation collapsed with a sharp crack, exposing a concealed pit lined with sharpened stakes. My body cleared the gap in a long leap while my hands were already sweeping the next sector. Off to my right, a suspended log came crashing down with a roar after a precisely directed blast of air. A carefully placed S-Power shot had severed the tension line before the trap could spring, and I raced through the danger zone without slowing down.
Reality dissolved into a relentless sequence of motion: sprint, assess, strike, evade. At one point, my peripheral vision caught the outline of a hidden Loz'an crouching in thick brush with a crude spear in its hands. Correcting my course took less than an instant. I drove three dense energy rounds straight through its body without breaking stride and kept charging along my assigned vector.
I snapped out of my state of hyperfocus when a crisp metallic click echoed inside my ears. The S-Armor systems had activated simultaneously. The suppression zone was behind me now. My tactical interface came alive, filling my field of view with its familiar green indicators. All systems were operating normally.
I glanced at the timer on my wrist. The entire run had taken exactly four minutes. My pulse was already dropping toward its resting rate, and my breathing had nearly returned to normal. The mission had been completed exactly as intended.
I turned around at an unhurried pace to see the results of my work, and a cold knot of unease tightened in my chest. Behind me stretched nothing but a long corridor of flattened vegetation and spent traps disappearing into the distance. There was no one there. My entire platoon had vanished.
My rational mind immediately shut down the rising wave of panic. Losing visual contact did not mean they were dead. Based on the information I had, there was only one logical conclusion. I needed to go back and find them.
I started retracing my steps. The moment I crossed the invisible boundary, my armor let out another muted chirp and powered down, bringing back that unpleasant sense of vulnerability. Still, thanks to my four-minute sweep, there were no active surprises left along the route. On the way, I passed the same Loz'an hidden in the bushes. The alien was dead, its pale, milky brain matter slowly dripping onto the purple moss.
"Oh, Tom! Holy shit, Ross!" Danny burst through a dense wall of vines wrapped in a roaring cocoon of fire, charging straight toward me at incredible speed. "Finally caught up with you!"
He skidded to a stop a few steps away, kicking up dry dirt beneath his boots, then snuffed out the fiery aura with a sharp act of will. The fading heat scattered a few stray sparks that landed with soft hisses, leaving black scorch marks in the lush grass around my feet.
"Man, do you realize you run like a damn wild mustang?" Danny said between breaths, chopping the air with animated gestures. "One burst, one sprint, and you were gone. One second you were right in front of us, and the next all we could see was empty jungle while the whole platoon was eating your dust!"
"You were the one who kept telling me to improve my conditioning and take tactical running courses," I reminded him, mentally comparing the timing with the platoon's rate of advance. "Did they really fall that far behind?"
"Let's just say... yeah, they did," Danny said, glancing back into the dense purple haze of the jungle before pausing for a moment. "The Colonel personally sent me after you because we lost sight of even your silhouette. It was like you just disappeared."
"Makes sense. Too bad the radios are dead inside the jamming field. We're only about twenty steps from the edge of the dead zone. Once we cross it, comms should come back."
"Hold up. Are you seriously saying you cleared a safe corridor almost a mile long all by yourself?" His eyes went wide behind the clear face shield. "Jesus, man. You've got balls of steel. All right, I'm gonna make a quick loop back and tell the Colonel you're alive and the route's clear. Stay put. We'll be here in a few minutes."
Without waiting for a reply, Danny launched himself forward, firing up his jet propulsion and vanishing into the jungle almost instantly. I did not even have the chance to point out that standing still out in the open was not part of my plan. Instead, I calmly counted out those same twenty steps and crossed the invisible boundary. The S-Armor responded at once. A soft wave of system indicators swept across the inside of my visor, green readiness icons lit up one by one, and that familiar, tangible feeling of protection settled over me again. My technological crutch was back online.
The rest of the platoon did not arrive until fifteen long minutes later. They looked worn out, to put it mildly. The forced march at high speed, carrying full combat loads while racing the clock, had drained every last bit of strength from them. Veterans and rookies alike were breathing hard, their shoulders slumped with fatigue. The looks they threw my way, at someone who was completely dry and showed no sign of exhaustion, carried equal parts disbelief and quiet irritation. I wisely kept to myself that my entire run, including clearing traps and scouting the route, had taken only four minutes.
"Ten-minute break! Drop where you are!" Leon bellowed, and the platoon practically collapsed onto the purple moss, their gear clattering as they hit the ground.
The Colonel walked over, stopped in front of me, and pinned me with a hard stare. "Ross, answer me one damn question. Why the hell did you take off like you were Usain Bolt?"
"Reaching maximum speed was a fundamental requirement for completing the mission at peak efficiency, sir," I replied, folding my hands behind my back without the slightest change in expression.
Leon sucked in a deep breath, clearly ready to unleash a string of military-grade profanity. Then he met my unreadable stare, let the air out in a weary sigh, and waved it off. Apparently, an experienced soldier knew better than to waste precious oxygen on a pointless argument. Besides, commanding officers never really got a break. Leon sat down on a fallen log, flicked his lighter, took a drag from his cigarette, and immediately buried himself in his tactical tablet, entering the coordinates of every trap I had neutralized and every dead Loz'an for the cleanup team that would follow.
I drifted a little closer to the group that was resting, catching bits of the veterans' hushed conversation drifting through the undergrowth.
"How the hell did that old guy move that fast without even breaking a sweat? He's got to be at least ten years older than me."
"I'll bet you a cold beer that if we corner him in a bar and ask what he did before this, he'll feed us that same line about being some quiet office worker and an accountant."
"Oh, come on, man. Does anybody actually buy that accountant story anymore? That guy was definitely special ops or deep recon. No way around it."
"Hell, none of us were office drones either, and after a sprint like that I'd still be face-first in the dirt. He had to be pumped full of something before we went through the portal. Military stimulants. Has to be."
I gave the faintest shake of my head and dismissed their speculation as background noise. Spending time and energy explaining myself to people I would most likely never see again after this training mission would have been completely pointless.
I wandered over to where our trainees were resting. Danny, naturally, had planted himself beside them. Ted was stretched halfway across the ground, his chest rising and falling hard, his face bright red behind the visor. Danny was still breathing heavily himself. Mary, however, immediately caught my professional attention. She looked as though she had just come back from a leisurely walk around the base. No heavy breathing. No sweat. A quick analysis of her abilities confirmed exactly what I expected.
"So you flew the whole way just above the treetops," I said, stating the obvious rather than asking.
"I see no tactical value in wasting stamina unnecessarily," Mary replied with a slight shrug, never even looking at me. Her voice remained calm and detached. "My current Awakened capabilities and S-Power reserves allow me to travel without unnecessary physical effort."
"Oh, trust me, I'd love to switch on bird mode and cruise over those bushes too," Danny said with a dreamy grin, lacing his fingers behind his head. "But rules are rules, bro. I can't leave my trainees without a damn good reason. And if I'd fired up my combat flames in the middle of the marching formation, we'd be spending this break picking melted gear off the ground."
"So basically, anyone who can fly is a shameless cheater," Ted rasped, wiping his nose with the back of his glove.
"Can't argue with that, kid. That's straight-up cheating," Danny said with a grin.
Mary answered with nothing more than a quiet snort, completely ignoring the jab as she deliberately turned her attention back to her gloves.
"Ten minutes are up! Break's over! Get your asses moving!" Leon roared from the center of the formation. "Thanks to our accountant, we're somehow back on schedule, and I sure as hell don't intend to blow it. On your feet, weapons up, and move!"
Once the S-Armor's active systems came online, the platoon's pace increased dramatically. We still ran into several hastily rigged tripwire traps, and in one narrow ravine we had to quickly deal with a Loz'an scouting patrol, but after everything that had happened earlier, it all felt like routine combat work. Efficient, coordinated, and without wasted motion.
Near the end of the second hour, the dense alien jungle began to thin, giving way to massive slabs of dark stone with a metallic sheen. At last, we reached the outer perimeter of the outpost. The Loz'an citadel rose before us. The final phase of the operation had begun: the assault.