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LOCATION: ORACELL PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING
CITY: ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY
DATE: AUGUST 21, 2026 | TIME: 10:15 AM
"Heads up," Aria's voice whispered over the comms. "Got eight tangos coming in hot from the east."
"Don't shoot until they're all in the box," Grim called out.
He and Brick got into position on either side of the gate the assault team would have to enter.
Brick was concealed behind a corrugated steel guard booth, and Grim squatted next to the main building out of sight.
Two black Ford Expeditions with urban assault kits on them turned onto the street. Reinforced ram bars were welded to the front, and Aria could see that the doors were armored and the glass bulletproof.
Their run-flat tires squealed loudly as the two vehicles took the turn at high speed, and they accelerated as they powered forward.
The reinforced steel gates at the end of the street stood defiantly, but Grim wasn't confident the strength of that steel would be high enough to withstand the force that was about to strike it.
The second truck slowed down as the one in front neared the point of impact, and a bone-jarring crash sounded out as the front vehicle rammed into the gate at 40 miles per hour.
The ten-foot tall gates crashed open, and the vehicle spun out immediately to avoid crashing into a light pole that was just inside. The second Expedition came to a stop next to it.
The cars sat silent for several minutes, as the men inside waited to see if there was any reaction from their dramatic entrance.
When they saw nothing, all four doors on each of the cars flung open, rifles exiting the vehicles before the men did. They swung slowly in wide arcs with overlapping fields of fire before they called clear.
Aria, Grim and Brick waited silently, not daring to move a muscle.
Two men on each side took guard positions while the others reached inside the cars to load up their gear. With nylon bags slung over their shoulders, they closed the doors.
At the exact instant the door on the front vehicle closed, the man kneeling in guard position was splattered with blood, bone, and brain matter from the man standing a foot away.
Aria reloaded and a second later another door closed, and another round split open the next man's chest, leaving a gaping hole where his heart was. The bag of C-4 he'd been holding dropped from his shoulder as he grasped at his chest, screaming out.
The bag fell to the ground just before his body did.
The moment the first sniper's bullet struck, Brick and Grim ran at full speed from opposite directions toward the vehicles.
Brick had his H&K assault rifle up and set for two-round bursts, while Grim was using his dual short swords.
The four men on the other side of the car facing Grim saw a blur of movement, and then a man closed the distance and appeared feet away from them.
The nearest Russian soldier raised his weapon toward Grim, but a blindingly fast slash of a sword took both the man's hands off at the forearms.
The firearm dropped to the ground, but the finger on the trigger had seized up, and the rifle started firing as it landed on the cracked blacktop of the parking lot.
Armor piercing rounds began tearing up the feet and legs of his compatriots. All of this barely registered for the soldier himself as he looked down at the stumps that used to be his arms and screamed out in agony.
Then his gaze shot up into the eyes of the man standing before him.
The attacker was smiling.
How could he be—
Shiiing
A razor thin blade swiped through the air and removed the soldier's head from his shoulders. Grim then used one hand to hold the man's body in front of him as a shield. The other hand sheathed his sword and reached down for his sidearm.
The three other soldiers were still dancing out of the way of the erratically firing rifle on the ground, and Grim picked them off with six perfectly placed double shots to the head.
Brick and Aria finished off the others at the same time.
From crashing through the gate to silence in the parking lot, the entire thing took less than five minutes.
"You're so slow," Brick said, scoffing.
"Fuck you, I had to take on four all by myself," Grim quipped back.
They bickered back and forth for a few minutes before Aria laughed over the comms. "You two… Never change."
Grim sent a message to Samir and Li as they were cleaning up the scene.
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Atlantic City tangos down.
They bet it all on red and lost.
Li, it's go time.
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LOCATION: ORACELL PHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING
CITY: JURONG, SINGAPORE
DATE: AUGUST 21, 2026 | TIME: 10:45 PM
The Oracell plant in Singapore, like the two others, was just another light manufacturing facility in the Jurong industrial sprawl. At night, it looked abandoned. Rows of corrugated steel sheds and buzzing lamps sat silently while the distant growl of container trucks heading for the port cut through the atmosphere.
Six Spetsnaz soldiers in pairs were closing in from three directions. Li had tracked them from the busier section of town to this dark area.
The first two entered the last dark alley south of Oracell. They walked slow and deliberate, rifles pointed downward but ready for action.
Every step was measured and careful. But not careful enough.
Li had conjured a handful of tiny pebbles using his Jade Sentinel special class skill. As the men slinked forward in the dark, from his cover behind a dumpster, Li tossed the pebbles onto the ground.
As the first soldier turned toward the noise, he lost his footing.
As he waved his arms out to maintain his balance, Li slashed through the air with his Jian sword. The arc cut through the man's torso, slicing through rib and heart, and exiting through his back.
His eyes glazed over, empty, before he even hit the ground.
The second soldier reacted instantly, raising his rifle to shoot the intruder, but in a blur so far he couldn't even follow, the man dodged his fired bursts and appeared at his side.
The Spetsnaz soldier started to turn and face his attacker, but a palm strike to the center of his chest stopped his heart, and moments later he, too, fell to the ground.
Li wasted no time. He pulled the bodies behind the dumpster and covered them with sheet metal and garbage, and continued on toward Oracell.
As he was about to exit the dark cover of the alleyway, he spotted the next two breaching the gate, and not far behind them, the final two members of the assault team emerged from the southeast.
Li grunted. "I guess it's time to test how well these defenses stand up to gunfire…"
Like Erik Drexler, Li had been craving some true action for weeks on end. Trips to Allovia were always exciting, but it wasn't the same as being on Earth and pushing your limits.
So, he'd decided to rely only on his Jian sword and his class defense abilities. He looked ahead one final time. The two working on the gate were almost through. It was now or never.
Li stayed to the shadows and ran to the east at full speed toward the backup team.
When he got closer, he changed direction and ran straight for them. The soldiers' reaction time was impressive, as they both raised their weapons and began shooting at Li.
Their accuracy was excellent, too. But Li had some tricks up his sleeves. When he'd hit level 20 recently, he got a new class defense skill that trumped everything else he had before that.
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Li Wei
Jade Sentinel
Class Skill:
Wall of Stones:
Conjure hundreds of small stones in front of your body.
The Wall of Stones moves with you and blocks incoming projectiles. Every impact reduces the integrity of the wall and removes stones. Number and strength of stones increases with STR and END.
---
A blow from a large war hammer would remove most of the wall in a single blow, but due to the size of firearm ammunition, Li theorized that bullet rounds would have limited impact.
He was about to find out, because these men were obviously both expert marksmen.
They began firing as Li closed the distance. He saw stones falling one by one, but the wall held just long enough.
Li grinned as the stones fell away. His theory had been correct. Small arms fire barely scratched the conjured barrier. The soldiers looked stunned that their expert marksmanship had failed.
When he got within melee range, the two soldiers had dropped their rifles to their sides and pulled out long combat knives.
Li laughed, but the look in his eyes would haunt the last minutes these men spent on Earth.
One swiped high, attempting to end the fight quickly with a cut to Li's eyes, but he simply leaned his head back just enough to avoid the slash.
Finally he withdrew his Jian sword. The two soldiers hopped in place and moved back and forth, but Li stood completely still with the sword held in front of him with one hand.
His other arm was out to the side, his index and middle finger extended from a soft fist.
Li watched them as they tried to flank him, but a step back or to the side kept them lined up. Finally one of the Spetsnaz lunged forward and grabbed Li's empty hand.
He pulled it toward him as he stabbed his combat knife forward toward Li's torso. Li fell to the side with the force, but the soldier immediately saw his own error.
His knife missed Li by almost a foot, but somehow the Chinese man had rolled over the soldier's back and used the momentum to swipe his sword forward. The man's arm fell to the ground with a wet thud, and before he could even scream out in pain, Li slammed a closed fist into his throat, collapsing his wind pipe and larynx. Finally, a flat palm strike to the soldier's chest stopped his heart.
The second Spetsnaz operative watched this happen, but the speed this man moved with was impossible. He didn't have long to wonder, because another slash of Li's sword took off his head.
The man fell to the concrete. The commotion had reached the other team, but instead of coming to help their comrades, they continued with their mission.
They had breached the gate and were already running toward the main building.
Li began chasing. One of the two remaining Spetsnaz lobbed a grenade over his shoulder in Li's direction.
The grenade went off with a sharp crump, a shockwave rattling loose tin siding and setting off a few car alarms. Li barely broke stride. He flowed around the blast smoothly, using the billowing dust to make his approach.
The last two Spetsnaz had reached the side of the main building, rifles raised to cut through the sheet metal wall. Li closed in from behind, his footsteps swallowed by the echo of the explosion.
One turned just as Li's shadow fell across him. He had time to shout a single word in Russian before the Jian punched through his chest. The other spun, wild-eyed, muzzle flashing, but Li was already inside his guard. His blade swept across the man's midsection, and the rifle clattered uselessly to the ground as he folded forward.
The silence was punctuated only by car alarms and the sizzling of overhead lamps damaged by the grenade blast.
The acrid tang of explosives, hot oil and cordite hung in the air, and the contrast of that with the saltwater on the breeze rolling in from the harbor was unsettling.
Li sent a message reporting his success.
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Singapore secure.
Six down, facility is safe.
Passing the baton to Samir.
---
Then he quickly dragged the bodies to the break wall, loaded them up with heavy gear and rolled them into the water. He confirmed they sunk, and slipped back into the shadows of the alley and toward his exfil point, before Oracell employees even stepped outside, unaware their parking lot had been a war zone only minutes earlier.
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System Broadcast
Vitalyx Recipients: 8,006,545,219
Rejuvenex Recipients: 2,901,529,134
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