Life Hunter

The latter was what Arima was doing with his rifle. A lot of the squad members would also observe him to admire their ent.i.tled sniper at work. After all, Arima had only trained four years with this rifle but had already reached a master level as he had used it for more than two decades.

Arima practiced a.s.sembling and disa.s.sembling his gun until they reached their destination. With the familiarity he gained with his weapon, he could do the entire process in six seconds.

"We"ve arrived" Moria said and slowly opened the hatch. He peeked outside and saw the sh.o.r.e of the island not that far in the night "We"ll have to swim a little to get there. Jin, let your drone fly from here. You should be able to connect with the other teams too" He instructed and took a strange sphere from a box inside the submarine. He pressed on a b.u.t.ton and it extended to become something like a handle with a small turbine on the front.

After that, he jumped in the water and used the device to quickly go to the island. Next was Erin, and then everyone did the same.

"Here" Arima smiled and took a sphere before throwing it at Jin. The latter grabbed it with a pale expression and sent daggers at Arima with his eyes.

"Hurry up with the drone. We"ll go out with you" Tieria said and Arima nodded. They were the only ones left in the submarine. The three of them had formed a team in this squad, they were basically always together on missions. Although they were the best a.s.sa.s.sin, sniper, and technician of the squad, no one ever told them something about forming a group together since they were really efficient.

"Us too, hurry" Tiria said from the top of the submarine as she waited with Garo and Farro.

Jin"s expression twitched "d.a.m.nit!" He hastened to deploy the drone and let him automatically fly upwards.

When everyone was on top of the submarine, they activated their underwater equipment and so did Jin "We"ll go first" Tiria said and jumped in the water with the two big guys.

"Jin, we"ll go with you, so just jump and be sure to not let go of that handle" Tieria rea.s.sured her friend and Jin sighed. He closed his bag to avoid his computer being destroyed.

He breathed in and jumped along with Arima and Tieria. The two of them helped him to not panic underwater and then arrived on the beach in no time. They only were in the water for a minute, but it felt like an eternity for Jin.

"Let"s go in the forest" Arima quietly said and went toward the forest of the island. Tieria followed him and Jin lit up an electric cigar since instead of a normal cigarette as he couldn"t make any light and also followed his comrades with a sullen expression.

They entered the forest and stopped when they found a bush to hide "Jin, what about the drones?" Moria asked through the radio.

Jin opened his laptop and checked the signal and the connections "We"re good. The other squads are here too. They already opened a channel to share information. We"ve also got a message from our ship, they"re ready to send aerial support at any time" Jin responded calmly.

"Good, stay separated, we"ll advance like that. Take care of the guards patrolling this forest" Moria instructed and cut the radio.

The trio nodded to each other and started going to the middle of the island under the cover of the trees. And even while moving, Jin was using his tablet "I can"t hack into their security completely. I only can set a loop on the cameras" feedback but they will notice that over time if they"re not stupid. What should I do, Sir?" Jin asked in the radio.

"Wait for my signal" He got his response and Jin put his program on standby.

"Shh" Tieria signaled to quiet down while putting the silencer on her gun. Jin and Arima instantly switched the radios off and slowed down.

They listened attentively and heard the voices of two people and then their footsteps "Stay here" Tieria murmured to Jin and nodded to Arima.

The latter slowly put down his rifle and took out his gun and knife and installed a silencer on the former.

He walked toward the voices and Tieria did the same but took another path. Both she and Arima spotted two soldiers walking in the forest while discussing.

They didn"t need to communicate with each other for sneaking up behind them and swiftly cover their mouth before cutting their throat. They then fired with their guns from behind to pierce their hearts before dragging them to a place more secure.

"It"s over" Arima said on his radio to Jin and they rejoined to continue onwards. They reached the end of the forest after a few minutes and saw the walls of the facility at least a hundred meters away from them.

Meaning that there was a hundred meters" worth of flat terrain separating the forest from the target "That"s rather…troublesome" Jin commented while peeking from behind a tree.

"You bet" Tieria said and took her radio to listen.

"We can"t rush there without cover. There are guards patrolling just under those walls and there are some inside the small rooms on top of it, looking at the camera"s images most likely. We"ll need to be quick. It"s the usual, Jin will loop the cameras, and we will eliminate the guards. We don"t have that many snipers. Arimane, you will have to take three by yourself, the other three will be taken down at the signal by Julian, Oreo, and Gen" Moria said.

"After that, we"ll go there together and climb that wall. We"ll have to climb quickly before they notice that the cameras have been tampered. So, prepare for that" He finished his instruction and put the radio on standby.

From their training, the squad knew that the signal will be a sound coming from the radio so everyone fell silent as the snipers positioned themselves to fire.

Arima casually picked up his case and a.s.sembled his rifle but as he was putting the gun on his shoulder, he saw that two of his targets were now talking together.

Arima frowned but didn"t say anything as he drew his pistol and calmly aimed at the soldiers. Jin and Tieria opened their mouth but restrained themselves from saying something. After a few seconds, a beeping sound came from the radio.

Jin immediately installed the loop and the three snipers fired and so did Arima. He quickly fired two times consecutively. The two soldiers he was aiming at fell dead on the ground.

Arima didn"t even use his rifle for the last guy as he stood up and pointed his gun at him before firing, eliminating the last target.

Jin sighed like he held his breath the entire time and put back the cigar in his mouth. He closed his laptop and stood up "Always so scary, huh?" He said and Tieria rolled her eyes as she agreed.

Arima smiled and put back his rifle in the case "A hundred meters is my limit like this anyway, we were lucky that it wasn"t farther" He said and started running to the facility with them. The other members of the squad also left the forest around and quickly went toward the walls.

They also did something particular as they took a strange device and scanned the throat and clothes of the people they had just killed. They then plugged it into their portable devices and Jin started working on his laptop.

It was a measure against pagers. Jin would scan the vocal cords, connect the connection of the pagers on his computer and then electronically reconst.i.tute a voice to answer. That technology was still not perfect but it was more than enough since even trained soldiers, particularly those protecting a certain place for a long period of time, don"t call the pagers unless they notice something strange.

The bodies of the soldiers were put in the dead angles of the cameras and then everyone swiftly climbed the wall by creating footholds on it with steel blades. Their exceptional const.i.tution allowed them to jump across it without touching the electrified grilling at the top.

Jin landed and instantly deleted the loop. He also received different messages from the other squads saying that they had infiltrated the facility in their own ways.

The squad gathered together on the top of the wall and looked at what they contained but they could only see a spherical roof that didn"t have any hole or window. They all silently nodded to each other and went to one of the small rooms built on top of the wall. Erin went beside the door and used a squarish device to look at it.

He then saw two red shapes, two heat signals, in the room. He put away the heat scanner and looked at one of the squad members. He instructed him with his eyes and the guy went to the door. He grabbed a really small object from his bag and pierced a hole on it with a needle before throwing it in the room by the gap between the door and the ground.

Everyone counted in their heads and waited for a minute. One of them then crocheted the door and entered. The two guys looking at the monitors were already dead and the small object that was thrown inside had dissolved in the air, leaving no trace.

Jin didn"t lose time and connected his laptop to the devices in this room. He looked at his screen for a moment while the squad inspected the room and called the elevator that was in it.

"I see" Jin muttered as he looked at the screen and looked behind him "Arima, you dabbled in programming, right? Help me for a bit" He said.

Arima was a bit surprised but put down his case and went to the monitors "What should I do?" He asked.

"Look, you see that line? That"s the address connecting those computers to the mainframe controlling the entire security system. I want you to trace it and connect to the source. I will cover you while you"re doing that. But I can"t do those two things at the same time because their system is quite tough. So, I need your help" Jin explained.

"I can do it" Arima nodded and started typing. Meanwhile, the squad patiently waited as they were ready to go down that elevator cage at any moment.

After a few minutes "We"re good" Jin said and Moria leaned over to look. Jin got a map of the place with all of the cameras" emplacement on it. He sent it quickly to the other squads while talking to everyone.

"This place has actually many underground levels…" He paused as he looked through some files "I only can somewhat connect to the cameras but I can"t access the database" Jin declared and displayed the images of the cameras.

He looked through some images before stopping at a certain bundle of them. Everyone in the room froze as they looked at the images displayed on the screen. Even Arima"s eyes widened as he stared at it.

On those images, you could see really disturbing looking things. First of all, there were some huge tanks of Eion energy. That wasn"t a surprise but what was connected to those tanks was another thing. They were connected with pipes to some giant humanoid robot frames on which some technicians were working on.

"Are they serious?" Arima said out loud what everyone was thinking. Giant robots. What a funny idea for the past generations but they still tried to make some. Arima remembered it perfectly, it was when he was eleven and he was particularly interested in that topic at that time.

But even with Eion, the idea was abandoned since the cost, the materials, the different constraints were too tough to overcome. So, in the end, the army only went for armored vehicles like giant tanks.

But that didn"t stop there, the thing that shocked the group was another image. Where one of those robots was being put to a test. And it was perfectly working. Even its movements were fluid. The second thing they noticed were people trapped inside some pods filled with a blue liquid, connected to those robots.

They seemed to have used human brains to replace the driving functions that should have been programmed.

And in some other images, the squad saw hangars filled with prototypes of Eion Fission Bombs. Basically, the equivalent of the nuclear bomb but with Eion as a base.

"d.a.m.n…" Jin didn"t have any other word to describe this.

"…We need to destroy this place" Moria said "We can"t even show this to the higher-ups. They will just do something worse with all of this" He declared and went to the elevator and directly opened the trapdoor that led to the elevator cage.

"Let"s go. Our main objective is to destroy the aerial defenses and then blow up the underground levels before calling an airstrike" He said with a strong tone and jumped down directly to the floor below.