One minute Colt was convinced that Oz had nothing to do with Operation Nemesis, and the next he wasn’t sure. Oz certainly looked upset when Colt confronted him about his father’s alleged involvement, but it could have been an act.
Colt thought about asking for a transfer to a different dorm room, but that was bound to raise questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Thankfully Oz didn’t show up until just before curfew, and he was gone by the time Colt woke up Saturday morning.
Grey asked if Colt wanted to grab some breakfast in the mess hall, but he decided to head over to the aerial field instead. He wanted to clear his head, and if he couldn’t surf, riding a hover-board was the next best thing. It looked like it was going to be a warm day. The sun was out, the sky was clear, and most of the snow had melted, leaving patches of white scattered across the grass. He worked on some basic maneuvers, trying to get used to the feel of the board as he glided across the track.
It was getting close to lunchtime when Agent Starling showed up with Giru Ba. He was talking, she was listening, and Colt hoped they wouldn’t notice him. “Nice bit of flying, but you may want to consider bending your knees and leaning forward just a bit,” Agent Starling said. “It’ll decrease wind resistance and increase speed.”
“Thanks,” Colt said, but before he could break away, Agent Starling started in about his boyhood admiration for the Phantom Flyer. “If it weren’t for your grandfather, I would never have become a world class flight instructor.”
“I’ll be sure to let him know.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Agent Starling said, his smile showing teeth that were both impossibly straight and eerily white. Giru Ba stood behind him without saying a word, her large eyes focused on Colt. He felt uncomfortable under her gaze, and he wondered if she had telepathy and whether or not there was a way to block people from reading one’s mind.
“Look, I’m scheduled for combat simulation in twenty minutes, and I haven’t eaten anything all day,” Colt said, hoping that Agent Starling would take the hint.
“What a coincidence. We were talking about heading over to the mess hall, weren’t we?”
Giru Ba nodded, though her eyes never left Colt.
“Would you care to join us?” Agent Starling asked.
“I’d love to,” Colt said, trying to sound polite. “I really would, but I don’t want to be late for my training session.”
“Then off you go,” Agent Starling said with a salute.
After a quick lunch that consisted of grilled chicken and an energy drink, Colt headed off to Combat Simulation. The training session was held in what looked like an abandoned warehouse. The windowless walls were painted a sterile white, and massive girders crisscrossed a ceiling that stood fifty feet above the concrete floor.
Nine other cadets were already in the room. Danielle was talking to Stacy and a girl Colt hadn’t met. Jomtong was there, along with Bar-Ryak and a cadet named Kethan Sareen. He was small, with short hair and a quick smile. Pierce stood nearby, slouched with his arms crossed, while Oz was off to the side, whispering something to Grey.
“Welcome to Wonderland!”
Everyone looked up to see an observation deck where Agent Graves was standing next to a man with round goggles and a waxed mustache. He was short and a bit overweight, with stubble on his head and a cherubic face that made it almost impossible to tell how old he was.
“The name’s Agent Daniel David O’Keefe, though most of the cadets like to call me the Gamemaster. You’ll know why soon enough,” he said with a light Irish brogue. “And this here is Agent Graves, who has asked to observe today’s exercise.”
Agent Graves nodded, and as his eyes fell on Colt, a thin smile crossed his lips.
“Now for the uneducated, you happen to be standing inside one of the most amazing inventions in the history of this fine world,” Agent O’Keefe said.
The air started to shimmer, and a moment later the cadets were standing in a dense rain forest. But something was off. The leaves on the trees were iridescent blue, the sky was pink, and the branches were filled with featherless birds that were a kind of charcoal color. Their eyes were covered in cataracts, and they had wings like bats.
“Simulation training allows us to create unique environments using holograms, so we can put you through scenarios without risking your precious little lives. Right now you’re standing in a jungle on the planet Bantoah,” Agent O’Keefe said. “Go on, touch something.” He stood with his hands on his hips, smiling as the cadets did as they were instructed. “The technology we developed gives dimension to the holograms. It feels real, doesn’t it?”
The air shimmered again, and moments later they were standing in what looked like Times Square, only there were hovercars flying overhead and strange aliens walking the streets alongside human counterparts. The simulation was so real that Colt could smell a nauseating mixture of urine and exhaust as though it were real. Virtually every square inch of real estate was covered with some kind of advertisement. In fact, there was so much visual noise that it was practically impossible for any one message to stand out over the others.
Agent O’Keefe explained that the city would be the backdrop for their training exercise, and he offered no apologies for lifting it directly from the pages of a Phantom Flyer comic book. “In this scenario, your objective is to stop a crackpot robot that calls itself Intellitron from launching nuclear missiles. It wants to wipe out humans so a bunch of godless machines can take over.”
“I thought this looked familiar,” Colt said. “The Phantom Flyer got sucked through a rift and into an alternate Earth where a scientist was working on a new artificial intelligence program for the military,” he said. “One of the robots he was testing turned on him. It’s actually Intellitron’s first appearance.”
“Who didn’t know that?” Danielle said, rolling her eyes.
Colt ignored the sarcasm. “It hacked into the Pentagon and sent something like a dozen nuclear warheads into Russia, which pretty much started World War III.”
“So how do we stop him? Or it? Or whatever it is?”
“Let’s hope we get lucky,” Stacy said, butting into their conversation. “It has super intelligence, it can rip a tank in half, and you can’t destroy it because it can repair itself.”
As Agent O’Keefe went over some of the ground rules, Colt looked to the sky for caped superheroes. He didn’t see any coming, but he noticed that Agent Graves was watching him.
“There’s a building called the Omega Foundation just around the corner and down the block,” Agent O’Keefe said as he went over their primary objective. “You have exactly forty-five minutes to break in and shut that robot down before it uploads the launch codes for those nukes. How you accomplish that objective is up to you.”
He flipped a switch on what looked like some kind of remote control, and a cache of weapons and other supplies appeared. There was an FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile with a launcher, an M82A1 sniper rifle, three M4A1 assault rifles, an M60E3 machine gun, two Sig Sauer P228 handguns, a satchel with a computer, and four ammunition belts filled with Electro Magnetic Pulse grenades.
“Now remember,” Agent O’Keefe said, “you’re in a densely populated urban setting, and CHAOS has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to civilian casualties. This isn’t a video game, and I don’t want anyone to go in there with guns blazing. You’re part of a covert mission, and your assignment is to eliminate a single target. So if you want to pass this test, make sure you keep that in mind. Oh, and I almost forgot,” he added with the hint of a smile. “I thought you might have a bit of fun with this.”
The air shimmered, and what looked like a fifteen-foot-tall robot made out of spare parts from a Sherman tank appeared in the middle of the street. A cab driver slammed on his brakes and veered over the curb and into a hydrant.
“This big galoot is what you call an ABS,” Agent O’Keefe said. “Does anyone besides Romero know what it stands for?”
Colt raised his hand. “Armored battle suit?”
“True enough,” Agent O’Keefe said. “There’s a cockpit inside the chest where the driver sits.” He looked down at the watch on his wrist. “Time is ticking, so you better get to it.”