Jaime Sommers woke up in her bed. She considered that a positive experience, because it meant that she had slept.

It was a cloudy Tuesday morning, with a distant sun casting twilight through the window blinds. Jaime rose from her bed, fully awake in an instant. Without thinking overly much, she grabbed the pistol off her nightstand and shoved it into the second drawer; the carrying bag found a temporary home under her bed. Jaime considered the tasks ahead and shivered.

Her phone rang with the unloved certainty of a brushfire after El Nino. Jaime would have preferred genuine grumpiness and sloth, but being "on", she could only offer an inauthentic recreation of the same. She reached under her bed, pulled out the cell phone - the business phone, too – and took the call.

"Good morning," Will's voice said. "Slept well?"

"Good morning to you, too," Jaime replied. "And yes. Until you woke me up."

"I don't think I did."

"You know I like to sleep in."

"And you know I can access your bionic systems through the phone."

Jaime raised an eyebrow. This was making too much sense for freaking 7 AM.

"Okay, got me there," she conceded. "Why are you calling?"

"Jonas wants you here today. Some basic training and paperwork. Bring your bag."

"Here?"

Yes, that's right, Jaime, rephrase everything as a question. Only way you ever get told anything useful.

"Wolf Creek," Will said. "Should be in your mapping system."

"That's great." Next question! "How do I use the mapping system?"

"…we really need to brief you properly."

"Yeah, no kidding."

"Hang on, I'll do it from here."

Within five seconds, Jaime's mind was swimming with the strong desire to drive North, nicely complemented by a down to a second of arc reading of North, both the geographical and the magnetical.

"See you," she managed to say, then hung up, dropped the phone and buried her face in her hands. The urge was still there, but subsiding slightly from the first intense rush. The voice that told her where to go had morphed from Drill Sergeant Nasty to a nagging kid, but it seemed like the more she learned about her new abilities, the less control she had.

Shower time, Jaime thought. Showers fix everything.

---

"…Wood's case against the Department of Defense reached the Supreme Court yesterday," the news anchor said, a nice steady baritone straight off the teleprompter. "With the ongoing efforts to stabilize the situation in Iraq as well as the increased troop levels in Afghanistan, the controversy about recruiting restrictions imposed by the DoD continues unabated…"

Four hundred miles away, Becca Summers rolled her eyes at the clumsy automated closed captioning. Uhna baited, indeed.

"Morning," Jaime said as she walked in from the bathroom, already dressed for the day in jeans and a green sweater. Becca raised her hand in acknowledgement, but focused on the TV instead; for all the time she didn't spend on looking at the notepad in her hands, she might as well have participated in an experiment on automatic writing. After a minute, she turned the TV off and wandered into the kitchen, where Jaime was already in the process of assembling cream cheese bagels.

"Why were you watching the news?" Jaime asked; Becca shrugged.

"Maybe I care about the world we live in."

"Is that the answer to my question? I can't tell."

"Class assignment," Becca said. "Talk about something in the headlines and how it affects us all."

"The word headline implies a newspaper."

"Jaime, how many of my classmates read newspapers?"

"Point. I guess you could stretch the definition to cover websites, though."

"…how many of my teachers get their news from the net?"

"Point the second," Jaime said. "So you're looking for something everybody has heard of so that you can actually discuss it."

Becca nodded to that. Jaime glanced past her little sister at the lowest common denominator of information society and sighed.

"What did you pick?"

"Maria Wood," Becca said, in the tone of voice reserved for phrases like "IRS audit" and "colonoscopy".

"Ah," Jaime said, "the soldier. So, how does that affect us all?"

"Gender-integrated combat units, probably draft registration for girls."

"You sound…uh, enthusiastic is not the word I'm looking for."

"Meat for the grinder," Becca said. "I mean, seriously, there's so many things that need protesting, and all this woman wants is the right to be shot full of holes in whatever the current mess is. It's just twisted. You know what I've got here? I'm actually making a list of all the real news we're ignoring because of bullshit like this."

Jaime plunked a plate with two halves of a plain bagel – both liberally smothered in cream cheese – in front of Becca, nonchalantly pushing the notepad aside. For a second or five, Becca didn't know what to do with the pen in her hand, then laid it aside and grabbed some food.

"It's good to care," Jaime said, "but please don't make a scene in the classroom."

"Can't help it," Becca returned between bites, half talking, half signing. "The blood of the revolution flows in my veins."

"How often does the blood of the revolution need to be picked up from the principal's office?"

Becca fixed her big sister with a cream cheese-stained smile.

"You are such a square," she said.

"It's hip to be square," Jaime said.

"No," Becca replied, "no. It's not."

---

Jaime's first unassisted drive to Wolf Creek was relaxing, in a way, taking her further up the Pacific Coast before veering inland for another two hours, finally ending up on what should have, by all rights, been a well-worn dirt road through a dense redwood forest – and instead was a well-worn paved road through a dense redwood forest. One of the turns found her right in front of the main gate of a facility that didn't look all that interesting from outside: a wiremesh fence perimeter, a few small 60s buildings, the largest of which one might describe as a hangar only when feeling very charitable, and a helicopter landing pad seemingly built more as an afterthought to dispose of leftover asphalt. Jaime's doubts over whether she had found the right place were dispelled when the main gate opened for her; the sense of direction in her head urged her to drive forward and into the hangar.

The first evidence of actual life was found there, but it made up for the delayed entrance through quality: six Berkut guards, fully armed, stood watch inside the structure, but made no move to stop Jaime from anything. Much of the hangar was painted to indicate parking spaces, and at least a dozen were filled, most with nondescript SUVs. Nonplussed, Jaime parked her car in a free spot, grabbed her Berkut go-bag and climbed out of the car. Something scratched at her memories; she had done this in reverse twice yesterday, being escorted out of the underground base, but she couldn't recall the details of either. After the sharp clarity of the drive to this place, the fuzziness in her head felt slightly threatening.

So, what now?

After looking around for what seemed like half a second, Jaime decided to pick out the guard who looked least likely to kill her (notwithstanding the confident response of her system, insisting that she could take all of them and Thomas Calavera, ex-Army, Military Police, in particular) and walked towards him, the bag's shoulder strap digging a little into an inexplicably sore spot above her collarbone.

"Excuse me…" Jaime began, then caught his glare as Calavera's vision didn't so much move as swivel to center on her. "Hi. I'm new here. Where's the entrance?"

"Sommers, right? Where's your ID?" the he asked. His monotone wasn't very threatening, in Jaime's opinion.

"Don't have one yet. Mr. Jonas Bledsoe is expecting me."

Jaime recognized that speaking the word "Bledsoe" seemed to serve as a mythical invocation, capable of compelling incredible results – in this case, Calavera reached for his radio headset. Jaime felt a slight tingle in her head, but left the guard to his conversation.

"Ops, this is Calavera, over. – Got Jaime Sommers for you at the main entrance, over. – Copy that. Calavera over and out."

"So?" Jaime asked.

"Personnel elevator is over there," he said, pointing to a nondescript partition within the hangar. It looked like it might have been used as an officer once. "You'll want the first sublevel."

"Thank you," Jaime said, then hurried in the indicated direction.

The partition lost all indicators of office-ness when Jaime entered; just around the bend from the door stood the solid sliding doors to be expected of an elevator, opening to her approach. The inside felt vaguely 80s-ish, with faux wood paneling and square plastic buttons. She pressed the one for Sublevel Uno, closed her eyes and enjoyed the slight shuddering of the elevator as it began its descent. None of this felt familiar.

The elevator doors opened to the tune of a standard-issue pinging sound after a short ride. There was a straight hallway up ahead, leading to the main offices, as well as one to the left, slightly curving on itself. Jaime chose that and walked a few steps, focusing on some windows set into the inside of the curving metal tunnel; a glance revealed free space with a large steel structure a few meters away. She stepped closer the glass and got a good look.

The walkway was, as far as she could see, a circular path on top of a large, excavated cylinder, with a massive concrete plug on top. It stretched on for at least two hundred feet down. The metal structure in the middle stood as a spire, connected to other, lower rings with various walkways and trusses. It seemed like a curious method of constructing a facility, to say the least.

Soft footsteps approached from behind. Jaime couldn't place them quite yet, but they sounded…male, cautious, not Will. She pretended not to hear.

"Good morning," Bledsoe said. "I see you've found your way here, Mrs. Sommers."

"Good morning…Sir," Jaime said. "So, what about that paperwork?"

"That's first on the agenda, but not all of it." Bledsoe moved closer, taking up a position beside her at the window. "Nice view, isn't it?"

"Claustrophobic is more like it. Was this built as a missile silo or something?"

"This would be a horrible place for a missile silo," Bledsoe explained. "The geology is suboptimal, it's within striking range of SLBMs, and there's no rail access."

"…you're not going to tell me what it was," Jaime said, dryly.

"I can't tell you what I don't know, Mrs. Sommers."

Jaime stared into the well-illuminated void ahead. A place that kept secrets even from its master clearly wasn't going to answer all of her questions.

"Let's get the signing over with," she said.

---

The next ambush was already waiting for Jaime as she stepped out of Bledsoe's office; Will was standing right by the door, looking a bit anxious and generally worse for wear. Jaime knew the signs of an all-nighter when she saw them.

"There you are!" Will said. "The test results are in."

"Hug first," Jaime insisted; Will obliged, mumbling "Always with the hugs" in a not unappreciative manner. "So, what's the verdict, Doctor?" Jaime asked. "Did I pass?" She started walking back to the elevator; Will followed, easily keeping step.

"Looking good all across the board," he said. "On a complete unrelated note, have you had any auditory hallucinations?"

"Like your voice in my head?" Jaime asked teasingly.

"Sounds not caused by Bluetooth."

"It's great, by the way. I'm the first human headset."

"Don't sell yourself short, Jaime," Will said, "you're also a very good GPS receiver."

The elevator pinged open as they reached it; Jaime pressed the button for Sublevel Two, containing – according to the general plan next to the control panel – the training dojo, firing range and secondary armory.

"Ready for the range?" Will asked, nodding to Jaime's bag; she shifted it behind her back, a bit self-conscious about carrying a weapon.

"No. But I do want to get it over with."

"If you ask me-"

"Well, for once I'm not," Jaime said with a smile.

"Okay."

"No, sorry," Jaime said, honestly apologetic. "Go ahead."

"I kind of hated it, too."

"Any mishaps I should know about?"

"No," Will said, "I'm paranoid about everything I do on the firing range. I'm just not comfortable with it. I can't pick up a gun and forget that it's used to hurt people."

"At least you have an excuse," Jaime replied. "Where are you going?"

"Level 5. I need to catch up on some sleep."

---

Jaime's first foray into the second sublevel of the Berkut facility found her (after a few left turns) in what could perhaps best be described as the nave of a medium-sized cathedral, built into a cave. This area completely abandoned the ridiculously solid proofing of the main structure for a quick, concrete-sprayed cave, added way after the fact. As if to anticipate Jaime's sacral interpretation, the wall next to the entrance actually bore a fairly detailed crucifix. The other contents of the cave weren't very holy, though.

And most cathedrals wouldn't be home to a firing range.

Jae Kim was already waiting for her, wearing safety glasses and earmuffs; at his prompting, Jaime followed suit. She glanced down the range: 50 feet from the stand to the targets, with five firing lanes.

"You brought your carry?" Kim asked, nodding to the bag slung over Jaime's shoulder; she tapped the bag in response. "Where's your holster?"

"Didn't get one yet," Jaime responded. "I'd feel better without the gun, honestly."

"This is counter-terrorism, not superheroing," Kim said. "You cannot solve every problem with your fists."

"Doesn't mean I have to kill people, either."

"There's a difference between learning how to shoot and being trained to kill people, you'll see. You may put the bag down over there, by the way."

Jaime nodded and did as Kim asked. More compliance. Then again, she reflected, playing with firearms was one of those things that really should make everyone sit up straight and pay attention. Kim watched her dispassionately; when she was done, he pointed her towards one of the stands. There were a P226 and a loose magazine lying on top of the small table; Jaime was eager to get this over with, so she instinctively grabbed the pistol and pointed it downrange, getting a feel for its weight.

"Don't do that," Kim said. "You must check to see if the weapon is loaded before you handle it."

"Can't be," Jaime responded, echoing the certainty of her implants. "Gun's too light."

"I'm really glad we're starting out with snap caps."

Kim held up the magazine, and Jaime saw that it was filled with bright orange plastic pieces in the shape of cartridges.

"Does this change your judgment?" Kim asked.

"Plastic isn't nearly as dense as metal," Jaime said by way of justification. "I could tell if there was a real bullet in there."

"The difference between a real cartridge and a snap cap is less than four grams," he said. "Just because the system has reference data on this weapon does not mean that deviation from it, or adherence to it, is of significance. Guns rarely stay exactly the same weight in every model revision. Then there are after-market modifications. Who knows, this weapon might have lightened grips and a round chambered."

"So, ass, you, me?" Jaime said, feeling just a tiny bit sheepish.

"With firearms, it is in your best interest to be certain. Do a press check."

"Okay, how?"

"Reorient the weapon so the ejection port points upwards."

Jaime turned her wrist to the side. So, technically, the muzzle of a gun could be called a "port" for ejecting bullets, but there was an opening in the slide's side that fit the bill and Jaime deduced correctly that this was the intended object. The combination of feeling like knowing how to shoot the wings off a fly without actually having a firm grasp of basic terminology was not a good one. Jaime resolved to work on that, right along with the thousand other items on her list.

Today's goal: get smarter, fast.

"Keep your finger off the trigger," Kim said.

"I knew that."

Okay, what now? Jaime thought. The whole enterprise looked suspiciously like the -90 degree rotational transformation as canonically applied to a one-handed firearm by your standard-issue urban malfeasant, with only her index finger resting outside the trigger guard as an attempt at gun safety.

"So, do I just-"

"Now, you should grab the slide at the front and pull it back just a bit – do you see the chamber?"

Cautiously, Jaime bent her right elbow, bringing the gun closer to her body. Her left hand reached out to grab the top of the pistol, then pulled it back. It took quite a bit more force than she thought it would. The inside of the pistol wasn't conveniently illuminated, but her eye adjusted easily.

"Yes," she said. "I can see it."

"Is it empty?"

No bullet inside. Jaime looked twice before letting the slide snap back forward.

"Yes."

"Then the weapon is clear," Kim said. "Every gun you pick up is loaded until you check it. It does not matter if you just put it down a minute ago or pulled it out of a safe, it is loaded until you make sure it isn't. Treat the weapon accordingly. Complacency breeds tragedy, more often than not."

"Okay," Jaime said, "easy enough. What else?"

"Pay attention to the hammer. When you do a press check, you should never pull the slide all the way back – that will cock the gun."

Jaime knew that the hammer was still uncocked before she saw it. Bad habit, she thought. Check the weapon. Stop listening to the system for everything.

Kim nodded approvingly. "Aim the gun," he said. "Tell me what you see."

Jaime flipped the pistol back into the vertical and aimed down the sights. Without thinking, her stance shifted: her left foot slid until it was well separated from her right foot, her shoulders curved forward as she brought her weight towards the front, and her left arm came up, cupping her right hand from below. The target at the end of the stand received a new, bright red center as Jaime fixed her gun on it. With an experimental twist, she moved the pistol sideways a bit. The red bullseye on the target moved with it.

"What is that?" Jaime asked. "It's like a dot where I'm aiming."

"That is the intent," Kim said. "In a combat situation, you rarely have the chance to stand still and aim down your sights. The dot will allow you to point-shoot effectively from any position. You can even slave your arm to your eye, and it will automatically try to aim in the direction you're looking."

"And it's all in the system?"

"All in the system," Kim confirmed.

"Huh."

Jaime lowered the gun. The point followed briefly, but slipped out of her field of view and became an arrow at the edge. The further she lowered the weapon, the broader the arrow became; conversely, looking downward reeled the arrow in until she could see what she was aiming at again.

"This is like a video game," she said.

"I believe that was Nathan's inspiration," Kim replied, then shrugged. "I am not against it, if it works. Now, we will deal with loading the weapon…"

---

None of Wolf Creek's places deserved awards for interior decoration, but Bledsoe's office was constructed from a potent source of anti-Feng Shui. The omnipresent metal furniture – his desk specifically – would not agree with either the sumptuous leather on his office chair, nor the surprisingly old and ratty couch against the left wall, opposite the shelves for whatever paper files Bledsoe needed to be there. The lampshade was too big, too, making it seem like the ceiling hung even lower than it already did. The room had all the charm of a cramped fallout shelter.

That suited Jonas Bledsoe just fine.

He wouldn't show it around the people working for him, but he actually liked to relax every once in a while. Generally, that could be accomplished by just leaning back into his chair, the faint creaking of well-worn leather a primal acoustical signal to close his eyes and let his thoughts wander. Difficult cases could be treated by lying on the couch, but Bledsoe didn't care for that at the moment. He was in his chair – sitting straight up – and, very intently, studying data. So far, so normal: the latest batch of fractal intelligence from the NSA usually made for good, light reading, at least for someone as obsessed with unusual threats and risks as him. But this piece didn't look good.

In fact, the words "Unknown attack vector" and "200 civilian casualties" put together in one bullet point looked positively horrifying.