The Super Huey touches down with a stable but abrupt bump against the ground, and FAL, Spas, Welrod, Grizzly, G36-C, and I all immediately disengage our safety belts and prepare to disembark. None of us dare speak a word, and I hold with slowly accumulating tension the dossier I confiscated from our target a day and a half ago in my left gloved hand.

A girl who looks about our ages - if we T-Dolls can be considered to have human ages - who's been sitting next to the righthand loading door gets up as soon as we land, takes hold of the safety handlebar next to the door, and gives us a quick glance and a grin. She's wearing a crimson red longcoat sashed around the waist by a large black belt, a uniform that gives her the impression that she could be a special attendee of a very important government ceremony somewhere that isn't related to United States political matters. And just before she speaks to us, she taps down the pair of large, circular glasses that she almost always wears on her scalp like a pair of goggles so that she can actually wear them properly for once.

"This is it, ladies!" Kalina barks at us cheerfully. No matter what the situation, she's always got a reason to smile, even if she doesn't really have one.

At her cue, all of us T-Dolls stand up from our seats and line up in single file, silently, after Kalina as the right loading door is opened up from the outside by a military policeman who's approached the helicopter swiftly as we landed. Kalina steps out first, and I, leading the rest of the T-Dolls, follow quickly.

"Your convoy is ready, ma'am!" the MP yells to us sternly over the beating of the Super Huey's main rotor blades that are still active. "Welcome to the Pentagon!"

The murky nighttime sky that's bleached over us, alleviated only slightly by the bright streetlamps all across the Pentagon grounds and from the various lights from the massive Pentagon complex itself, looms over us with its dreary clouds as we follow Kalina, unarmed, towards our waiting convoy sitting basically right next to our landing zone. Kalina turns around as she's walking to it, motioning for us to hurry up.

"We're late!" she informs us, and despite her usual smile, we sense a clear degree of urgency in her voice, so we comply. A suited Pentagon worker who's part of the our escort convoy crisply opens the passenger door of our limousine for Kalina, and we pile inside swiftly, with the same man closing the door after us to seat himself in the shotgun seat.

Once we're all seated, a U.S. Army general who's already inside the limousine with us, seated furthest away just behind the shotgun seat and the driver, eyes us silently, almost scornfully. This, thankfully, doesn't last for long, as someone else is already in the vehicle with us, someone who's more important to us at the moment: a woman uniformed identically to Kalina and sporting her most distinctive physical feature that is her large monocle over her right eye extends a hand to me, also giving me a nod of acknowledgement.

"Senior Officer Helianthus," I murmur respectfully, and we shake hands.

"As always, your reputation precedes you," Helianthus remarks. "Excellent work with the dossier."

I nod silently as the U.S. general orders the driver to proceed. The police motorcycles who've been tasked to escort our convoy turn on their sirens to clear the way, and our limousine, along with the others, get started driving us to the Pentagon. And as the U.S. Army general observes distantly and coldly, Helianthus rests her hands in her lap.

"Have you been told the situation yet?" Helianthus asks quietly in her Edinburgh accent.

"No, ma'am. We were summoned here on short notice," I reply sharply.

"I see. I don't have the clearance to brief you as I normally would at the moment."

No clearance to debrief us? That must be the same reason why I was told by Kalina not to hand her the dossier I have. As Senior Officer of G&K, Miss Helianthus worked as our senior mission control officer during the time of the Frontline, and because T-Dolls are property of G&K and are mandated to view all G&K staff as their direct superiors, by technicality all T-Dolls are Helianthus's subordinates. Therefore, had we not been summoned to the Pentagon and placed ourselves under American military supervision, I would have handed her this dossier immediately for her to see.

"Permission to request sitrep," I ask tersely, eyeing the general across from us.

"Again, no clearance. You will be briefed properly onsite," Helianthus says definitively, effectively ending our short-lived conversation. So we spend the rest of our time in our limousine in total silence as the motorcade drives to the Pentagon.


Once we reach the Pentagon, Helianthus, Kalina, and we six T-Dolls march discreetly inside, passing through multiple security clearance stations along the way. Every time we passed one, Kalina or Helianthus would administer a special passcode, unique to each security detail, upon which we would be let through while a suited man at each station whispered into their microphones, "The VIP's are here", or "they're here".

"Your first time at the Pentagon?" Kalina asks us T-Dolls cheerfully as always, but while I nod, the others don't, instead shaking their heads. "Hopefully you're hanging in there. The Pentagon's a pretty strict place."

"You don't say," FAL remarks sarcastically, and Kalina chuckles quietly too.

"You get used to it. And honestly it's not even that bad. You all only feel this way because we're under American military supervision."

"Supervision, huh..." Welrod uneasily eyes all the security cameras in the hall that we're walking down, with Helianthus leading us. "I thought bloody Yanks were supposed to be anti-communist."

"Now, now, Welrod..."

Down the hall, there stand two suited guardsmen armed with stock M16-A1 rifles, and when Helianthus approaches them, she gives them the final passcode that will grant us access to this room.

"Prospero," she calmly inputs, and the guardsmen stand aside to let us in. Helianthus opens the door herself, and we all file in after her.

Once the door is closed behind us, we find ourselves in a dark room that's only illuminated in the center, where an oval table sits with exactly enough chairs to seat us all - plus one. That plus-one, clearly waiting for us while silently standing in the darkness to our upper right of the room, steps out of said darkness and into the light, revealing himself and his tall, muscular stature over which he wears the same red longcoat as Kalina and Helianthus, only by simply donning it on his shoulders and not actually wearing it.

As soon as he makes himself seen, all six of us T-Dolls snap to attention to salute him as he walks to the table.

"At ease, ladies," Mr. Kryuger says gruffly in his thick Russian accent, waving us all to be seated at the table. "Come, there is much to discuss and not enough time to do it."

Swiftly complying, we sit down to join him, and sitting closest to Mr. Kryuger, I hand him the dossier, as previously directed. He accepts it silently and opens it up, browsing through its small amount of contents.

"Mmm...I see..." he murmurs slowly, and within a few brief minutes, he sets down the manila file that is the recovered dossier and looks at us with icy impunity. "With this, I can now authorize this mission."

Reaching into his inner jacket pocket (not his red longcoat, the business suit jacket that he wears as his actual attire for today), Mr. Kryuger produces a small black cube that he sets on the table and flicks halfway across so that it is in the center from everyone, and when it slides to a stop, it unpacks itself to reveal a tiny antenna that suddenly projects a solid beam of light straight up to the ceiling. This beam of light then structures itself into a globe, but not just any globe - a near perfect recreation of the Earth, rotating and revolving around the sun that we cannot see in this projection in real time.

"Two weeks ago, our partner company, Lukenstor Defense Systems, suffered massive cyber attack that compromised about 35% of its total database," Mr. Kryuger reveals. "For those of you who are unaware of Lukenstor, they are a secret sister company that provides us the means to maintain T-Dolls after the Frontline; they were also the same company that was responsible for T-Doll construction, and for their safety, they merged with G&K at the start of the Frontline so that the Sangvis Ferri could not locate them and strike at us where it would have damaged us the most.

"Currently we have Third and Fourth Echelons investigating the origin and the perpetrators of this cyber attack, but the attack was conducted in such a way that they are still having trouble tracking down those responsible, until earlier this week, when Lukenstor tipped off Third Echelon about a potential suspect that they'd found. They investigated the area until the time off your mission in order to prepare you adequately for it, and your mission was intended at first to neutralize the target and any witnesses. However, during the mission, Lukenstor confirmed that the suspect was Ken Simpson, a freelance coder, software engineer, and hacker who is very well known in the freelance software business for his skill and, in the underground hacking community, for his substantial hacking ability. Simpson is reported to be a very eclectic individual, and whatever he works on tends to be different from the rest of the work that others of similar backgrounds produce; therefore, I ordered Walter to secure this dossier and return it to me."

"What's the dossier about, sir?" Welrod asks.

Mr. Kryuger squints in an aggravated fashion.

"T-Doll tech," he hisses softly. "While I am not an expert on the subject as the Lukenstor scientists are, I have spent enough time with them and with T-Doll construction phases firsthand long enough for me to know that Simpson was tasked to attempt to reverse-engineer T-Dolls."

A strong silence grips the room, as if there wasn't one already. Grizzly clears her throat to ask a question.

"Even if they were to reverse-engineer us, wouldn't that be a waste of time? There's no company in the world that can construct T-Dolls," she points out.

"I would not be so sure," Mr. Kryuger shakes his head. "If we can possess the means to produce T-Dolls, other companies might be able to as well. The Sangvis Ferri was one example that thankfully does not exist anymore. However, the danger that another Sangvis Ferri, just under a different name, can exist may return."

"Besides, someone trying to reverse engineer T-Doll schematics is dangerous by itself," Helianthus adds. "Even if Simpson were not able to figure out exactly how to do so, there can always be others he can turn to for help in order to complete his objective, or to simply pass on the schematics to another group whom we have no idea about who can begin manufacturing T-Dolls."

"Fourth Echelon has traced Simpson's electronic communications and have found the location of whoever or whatever he was speaking with the most for the past two weeks," Mr. Kryuger informs us, and the globe spins around slowly to show us a highlighted location in Germany: the city of Cologne. "First Echelon, you are to travel to Cologne and track down this target. Identify the target and obtain as much information as you can from them and/or about them as possible and report to G&K about your data within seventy-two hours. In the meantime, the rest of you, you will be rerouted to G&K HQ for further instructions."