Gavin Smith: Crysis: Escalation

‘How do you fight a company? What? Do you want to go into the board room and start laying fire down?’ Prophet demanded.

‘If that’s what it takes,’ Psycho said firmly. Prophet checked the voice analysis again. Psycho was telling the truth. ‘Let’s go back to New York, finish what you started. Let’s tear the heart out of CELL and shove it down their fucking throats.’

It was tempting. Not because Prophet believed like Psycho did. He really didn’t care who was in charge. It was tempting because it sounded like a life. As harsh, violent and short as it might be, it sounded like something a human would do. But he knew that the images of what he had been shown, the future, would never stop playing through his head.

‘CELL aren’t the mission…’ Prophet started.

‘You were always a good little boy weren’t you, Prophet? Did what Hargreave told you after they got you out of that little jam. Has it occurred to you that they’ve done something to you, in the suit, that makes you not want to go after CELL, to do as your told, behave?’

Prophet was across the room. He had Psycho by the neck and lifted the other man up. He started squeezing.

‘Do you know what they did to me!?’ he screamed, but as quickly as the rage had come it was gone. He dropped Psycho.

‘Nobody puts their fucking hands on me!’ Psycho raged, his suit flowing and preparing for battle. Prophet could see the Londoner was seconds away from going for him.

‘Psycho, I…’

Something changed. It took a moment for Prophet to work out what. There was something different in the rhythm of the town. It had just got quieter. He cycled through various comm frequencies. Nothing. Even the company that handled the policing in Rovesky had gone quiet.

Dead lips smiled. A rictus grin. They were learning. Mainly about comms discipline, it would seem. He could hear engine noises now, the suit sorting, separating and analysing the sounds. Images of the vehicles making the noise started to appear in his Heads-Up Display, effectively playing across his vision.

‘What?’

‘Here’s your chance,’ Prophet all but whispered.

Both of them heard the fire door battered open with a sound-dampened pneumatic ram several floors below. They heard boots on the stairs.

Psycho picked up his gauss rifle, quickly checking it.

Time to send the message , Prophet thought. Every Macronet-connected comms device in Natasha’s House of Pleasure started chiming urgently as it received a priority text: You don’t know me, but I know you. Something very bad is about to happen. You all need to leave, now.

Even if they believed the message Prophet knew that there wasn’t going to be enough time for them to evac. It was going to go badly for the prostitutes, the regulars, the overseers and the door staff he’d been living vicariously through for the last days. CELL wanted their toys back and in his case they wanted what was left of the corpse in it out, regardless of who was driving the corpse’s head.

He stood up and started walking towards the skylight at the front of the building. It overlooked the junction of frozen muddy streets in front of the brothel. Cold blue light flooded the attic. The suit’s visor darkened to compensate. Prophet could hear the roar of the VTOL keeping pace with him as he walked, its searchlight shining through the other skylights.

He should stealth now, he knew, Psycho already had, but before it started he just wanted them to see what they were dealing with. He wanted to know how frightened they were.

‘Here, Prophet, ever seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?’ Psycho asked over the suits’ comms.

He reached the skylight at the front of the building. He looked down onto the frozen streets. Perhaps he’d underestimated just how much CELL wanted the suit back, he thought. The street outside was full. APCs, Bulldogs, Armoured Security Vehicles, at least four VTOLs in the air, slowly circling him, and a lot of soldiers. The HUD was showing a ridiculously target-rich environment and all the weapons he could register, from SMGs to vehicle cannons to missiles, were pointed at the attic.

The glass broke as Prophet stepped through the skylight onto the ledge outside the attic. More searchlights stabbed up at him, fixing him in their glare as his visor darkened further. He could hear amplified voices shouting at them. He found it absurd that for some reason their instructions were repeated in Russian.

Prophet took a long, slow look at the CELL forces. Then he started to move…

There’s a first time for everything. He remembered his first gunfight. He had been frightened but he had got through it; his training had overcome the fear. What was he trying to prove here? The thought flew through his head. Along with: I should have used the .45.

Cutting a throat isn’t a smooth slice, Barnes knew, you really had to do some sawing. As he’d emerged from the undergrowth the mercenary had started to turn. In the old days the Medellin and Cali cartels had used British, US and Israeli ex-military to train their people. This new breed of cartel used Eastern European mercenaries, many of them ex- Spetsnaz , both to train their own gunmen and to augment their forces.

As Barnes wrapped himself around the man and took him to the ground to control his movement and started to saw at the throat he realised that the man really could fight. The mercenary knew what to do in this situation, how to counter it, and knew that he desperately wanted to live. In short, Barnes’ silent takedown was not going nearly as well as he’d hoped.

Artery, artery, starve the brain of blood, windpipe, stop him crying out. Clamp down tight, stop fingers from getting in the way of the blade. He was all but riding the man around the small clearing overlooking the Ferranto Valley and making enough noise to warn people in Bogotá that somebody was being murdered.

The cartel mercenary stopped moving. Lieutenant Laurence Barnes, 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, did not stop sawing, not until he was positive that the mercenary was good and dead. He sagged, covered in sweat, fighting for breath, his right arm coated in blood up to the elbow. It was his second mistake of the day.

The second mercenary moved quietly out of the jungle, assault rifle at the ready. The expression on his face didn’t even change as he took in the scene. The barrel of the mercenary’s rifle swung towards Barnes as he frantically reached for his sidearm. Barnes knew he was not going to be quick enough. The cartel gunman had him cold. The mercenary’s face seemed to distort, crumple in on itself. Then again, as the second near-silent round took him in the face. The hydrostatic shock popped the top of the mercenary’s head off. His ruined face became red and he hit the ground.

Thank you Earl , Barnes thought. He heard what sounded like two coughs from the nearby trees as at least one other cartel gunman died due to suppressed gunfire. He’d told himself that he’d use the knife instead of the suppressed Heckler & Koch Mk 23 .45 automatic because of the chance of the muzzle flash warning other nearby elements of the Antioquia Cartel and their FARC allies’ military forces. If he was honest, an element of using the knife had been because he wanted to bust his knife-kill cherry, and that came from a new lieutenant in Delta Force wanting the respect of his people. Particularly as he’d come from 82nd Airborne and not Special Forces or the Rangers, as was more normal for Delta Force. It was a silly game to play at this level, he admonished himself.