Hello, this is my first fanfiction. If you take the time to read it, please review it as I need feedback to improve!
Crysis:
The other angle.
In hindsight, Lingshang was a massive clusterfuck.
A carrier group lost, hundreds of Marines and sailors killed, 7 operators KIA, 2 MIA, billions of dollars spent on covering it up, and potential nuclear war with the Koreans after they spun some shit about the bomb we dropped on the island.
And for what?
Yeah, the DOD learnt of the aliens, or Ceph as they're now being called (I think some Geek at Crynet coined that term), but other than what we saw and fought on the island, we know next to nothing about them.
It all seemed like something cool at first, you know?
I mean, I'm too cynical to get caught up in all that "blacker than black" and "We can turn you into a superhuman" bullshit, (12 years service, 4 of those as a Delta operator will do that to anyone) but I had to admit I was intrigued, I mean it sounded like being in a comic book or something.
I was Intrigued enough to leave the teams and sign up for the Nanosuit program, anyway.
Crynet told us that only 1% of all humans had DNA that was compatible with the suits. Luckily, that DNA was prevalent in SF operators (seems that the program was initially geared towards us alpha-male dumb grunt types) but even so the entire SF community didn't provide enough personnel for the teams.
That's how we got psycho, that crazy Brit bastard.
Anyway, who cares about that, it's afterwards we're interested in.
That's when the weird shit started happening (yeah, I've killed aliens on a frozen tropical island and I think this is weird)
Hawk team are all KIA.
Raptor team lost Aztec and Jester, Prophet is MIA.
Eagle team, my guys, we came off lightly. We only lost one guy MIA, my good buddy Bear.
After getting off the island, the debrief takes days. We are questioned together, apart, together again. We are encouraged to talk about it together, talk to therapists, and recall every single aspect of the mission as accurately as possible, so the boffins can glean info from it (which, incidentally, we do. Turns out perfect recall is a side effect of wearing the nanosuit)
All the while these Crynet suits are skulking around in the background. After a couple of days the DOD releases us to Crynet for debriefing, we are moved to a separate facility so they can get the suits off of us without damaging either party (so they say).
When we get there, some old guy on a giant flat screen introduces himself to us, Jacob Hargreaves he calls himself.
He starts chattering about how grateful he is for our efforts, how the data from the nanosuits (which he calls the N1) will be instrumental in perfecting the mass production model.
See, it turns out our N1s were just prototypes (that explains the shitty night optics, some retard obviously threw that in at the last moment), precursors to the next big thing, the imaginatively titled N2.
He goes on about next generation AI, semi-autonomous operating parameters blah blah blah, but to be honest I wasn't really listening by that point, I just wanted to get out of the suit.
That's when the weirdness starts.
We go in, one at a time, get our suits removed and end up in some kind of plush waiting room, the kind that real rich people must have at their private hospitals, all fat cushy sofas and free snacks, big TV on the wall that kind of thing.
It is "requested" that we stay there until the procedures are finished.
It takes hours, though I'm sure my N1 came off in about 5 minutes.
And when it's all done, we're down some men.
Nomad, Psycho and Cupcake are nowhere to be seen.
Dane is the most vocal of us, questioning the anonymous limp dick in a suit they send down to send us home, asking them what the fuck they have done with our guys.
He tells us
"Due to complications, most likely from the excessive amounts of damage sustained in battle, your friends are remaining behind for further treatment."
Bullshit. They would discuss it with the rest of the teams first, they would at least want to say goodbye to us.
"We can assure you that they are perfectly safe, they have volunteered to participate in a data gathering exercise. It's the first time we have been able to remove battle damaged N1s from live-"
He pauses for the shortest moment, not wanting to choose a word like "subjects" or "hosts" that might offend us, but we catch it anyway.
"combatants. If you would be so kind as to…"
He gestures with his arm and the goons close in, tooled up mercs dressed in the latest hybrid memory gel/spider weave body armour and toting SCARS, all decked out in some corporate bastardisation of urban camo (we would tear these guys apart in seconds if we had our nanosuits, annoyingly enough).
As they move in to usher us out into the transport, glances are passed between us, a strange tension fills the air for a second as though we all feel the underlying hostility behind the smiles and carefully constructed sentences.
Then just as quickly the moment is gone, what hope would 3 operators have against a squad of fully armed mercs, no matter how well trained we are.
The idea is absurdI think to myself as I look at Dane and Blue dog, all of us wearing matching mauve hospital scrubs, unarmed and looking tired from days of no sleep.
So we get on the transports.
Back at Bragg we get isolated, separated, confined to quarters, told to wait for instructions.
I never saw Psycho, Nomad or Cupcake again.
That was 8 months ago.
Chapter 1
Sgt Daniel "Bandit" Taylor sat in his quarters, staring at the TV.
There was nothing on it.
He didn't know what time it was, but it was dark, so he guessed it was late/early.
The living room was a mess. Empty liquor bottles and take away containers lay strewn about with his father's Kukri, the only weapon he had managed to smuggle into isolation with him, buried point first in the coffee table.
It wasn't a real one. His father had taken a thoroughly modern weapon, it's black anodised blade and polymer handle betraying it's replica status, with him into operation Desert Storm back in the 20th.
It was the only thing baby Daniel got from his dead dad, after he died in the invasion.
Friendly fire, A10 tank hunter took out his humvee column. He wasn't even a combat soldier, just some dumb clerk whose CO took them down the wrong road.
Bandit had decided to do better.
He took another swig from the bottle in his hand, grimaced as the liquid burned it's way down his throat.
"Doing much better now, huh!" Bandit said to an empty room.
Never was much of a drinkerhe thought to himself, though it had been happening more and more in recent weeks.
The therapists told him it was a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, told him he should be careful, stop bottling up what was inside, it's self destructive.
Usual head shrinking BS.
Whatever.
Being confined to quarters was mind numbing.
He had to call in every hour from 0700 to 2300 to confirm he hadn't tried to do a runner, and guards checked in on him in the silent hours to do the same.
At first he coped pretty well.
He developed an in-house fitness routine and stuck to it religiously for the first few months, as well as rediscovering his love for porn and computer games with the excess free time at hand.
Then the sickness came.
It wasn't too bad, lethargy, the odd headache, a bit of vomiting, seemingly at random intervals.
But eventually it got to him. The endless therapy sessions, the blank stares that met his questions, the lack of anything to fucking do.
The sickness was the cherry on the cake, the part that tipped it over from bearable to outright depressing.
So he decided to get drunk instead.
A lot.
And the therapists chastised him, but they never denied him the alcohol, after all he had to request it to be delivered and they could always refuse.
But he figured it kept him quiet, out of trouble, compliant, so they let it slide.
Motherfuckers.
Placing the bottle down unsteadily onto his coffee table, Bandit clapped the light strip on and stood up groggily.
Blinking heavily as the room was thrown into stark brightness, he caught his reflection in the darkness of the TVs LED screen.
Pale blue sunken eyes looked back at him. His short brown hair was greying at the temples and he swore he had twice as many wrinkles as yesterday.
Bandit tugged at the scraggy beard on his jaw as he inspected himself.
32 years old. He was a warrior in his prime, his entire adult life spent in the military, and here he was, rotting away in an issued single bedroom apartment.
What a waste of time.
Lifting up his 3 day old t-shirt he sniffed his armpit and retched.
Damn I need a shower.
He looked at his torso before dropping the shirt back down, noting that his six pack had begun to hide underneath the alcohol abuse, his flanks beginning to soften.
He needed to do something soon, the inactivity was killing him, he wasn't used to sitting around and doing nothing.
He was an operator and he needed to train, needed to practice, needed to stay sharp.
Bandit was bored shitless.
It just made no sense. These were the most experienced men, the de-facto subject matter experts on fighting the alien threat, yet they were being kept like they were in quarantine.
Maybe we are
Bandit mused as he stood under the shower head, scrubbing himself clean under the scalding hot spray.
It turned out that the time was around 2245 when Bandit first got off the couch, as a loud knock on the door disturbed him from his efforts to leave an imprint of his fore head in the shower wall.
BANG BANG BANG
He jerked his head upright and snorted in surprise, choking as a glob of snot and shower water went down the wrong hole.
The noise of the front door knob turning, and a voice.
"Sergeant Taylor, I'm coming in."
"Yeah yeah, I'm coming, give me a moment."
Bandit stumbled from the shower, threw a towel round his waist and entered the living room.
What greeted him there was one Lance Corporal Fiennes, a big bullet headed MP built like a linebacker, would be if it wasn't for the gut spilling over his belt, threatening to burst out the bottom of his fatigue shirt.
Fiennes had been his security guard for the last 3 nights, starting at 2300 to show Bandit a fresh face, then checking on him while he slept, hence the key he held to the Army apartment.
Bandit didn't particularly like him, he wasn't much of a talker but that was ok, as he realised that it was probably mutual. Fiennes probably didn't appreciate babysitting some jumped up SF operators on a 4 on 4 off shift.
The hefty MP stared at the blade embedded in the table as Bandit emerged from the bathroom, as he had done for the last 3 evenings.
"Don't even think about it dude, you know that blade was my dad's. It's a keepsake, not a weapon."
You only had to look at the knife to know this was a blatant lie, it was like a promise of violence made steel.
What was it Psycho called it?
Bandit padded over to the big man, who held out a thumb print scanner at waist height from a retention cord on his belt.
Ah yes, Blagging. Bandit was blagging the MP so he didn't take his toy away.
Bandit placed his right thumb on the pad and stared at Fiennes, who was clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation, some guys just didn't like their personal space being invaded.
"so." Bandit begun as they waited for the little machine to do it's work, hoping to change the subject away from his blade.
"How are my fellow captives on this fine night? Dane got anything to say for himself?"
Fiennes raised one Neanderthal brow quizzically.
"You know I can't talk about that, Sergeant."
A quick look up and down.
"You drunk?"
"Yep."
"Again?"
"Yep."
"Jesus man, that's every night this week."
"Yeah, because I've got a crapload of other stuff to do, right."
The thumb reader gave a little chime and Fiennes stepped back toward the door, visibly relieved to be out of Bandit's personal space.
"You should get some sleep, Sergeant Taylor."
Bandit snorted, who the fuck was this little upstart to tell him what to do.
"You know what, I really want a pizza. Extra large, thin base, pepperoni."
Lance Corporal Fiennes sighed.
"I'll get one sent out within the hour."
Bandit grunted at him and sat back down on his couch.
Fiennes left without comment and Bandit decided to get some net time in, his one connection to the outside world like a lifeline for his sanity.
He fired up the cloud and immediately went to the inbox, trawling through piles of spam to see if anyone he knew wanted to talk to him.
While scrolling through a list of junk mail with a Jack Daniels addled indifference, one particular e-mail caught his attention, a message from
CRYNET COMBAT SOLUTIONS
In all capitals, no subject reference.
Click.
Subject:
Date: Fri 14th May 2021
Ever wonder how the Koreans got hold of nanosuits?
Crynet says they stole the technology and reverse engineered it but I don't buy it.
Look at the rest of their tech, its generations behind anything we have, even if they stole the nanotech, it would be like giving a laptop to a caveman.
And how did they become aware of the artefact in the first place?
Do you see?
I currently have no proof of crynet's involvement but I know where it is.
What I need is a nanosuit to break their proprietary encryption, unfortunately it is based on the same tech as the suits your team wore at Lingshang.
N1s are specifically gene-coded to their users, and the N2 is not ready.
I don't need to spell it out for you.
You are being held in isolation because the DOD believe anyone who came into contact with the Ceph could be infected with a lethal extra terrestrial virus.
They are trying to watch you die.
I'm not privy to any details, but they should all be on the same secure servers.
If you want to know if there's any truth to their fears, come to the crynet facility and take your suit back. It's location is not secret, a quick google search will give you the address. Just don't try and reply to this message, it's only secure one way.
Help me and I'll help you.
That's all it said.
No mention of Cupcake and the others.
Bandit screwed his eyes up, tried to focus through the stupor.
Maybe that was intentional, trying to get your mind working. Yeah.
Talk about dangling a carrot.
He read through the E-mail again a few times, tried to get something useful out of it, after all there was nothing on there that he hadn't thought about himself at some point in the last 8 months.
But there was something about seeing it in writing, somebody else's writing,that made it seem real, like it wasn't just paranoia.
A small voice inside his head told him don't, you're heavily post traumatic, and sick, and you're becoming a drunk.
Bandit stewed over this for several minutes, eyes staring into the toilet bowel as he vomited violently don't even remember getting to the bathroom before he reached a moment of clarity.
Who was he kidding?
He had known as soon as he saw who the mail was from. He had to learn where his friends had gone, had to learn about Crynet.
They
had gone from being just that weapons company in the background who were providing this new gear, to somehow being at the centre of all this overnight.
He was going, no doubt about it.
Right after he sobered up.