Kate

  Kate Razor watched as Judith Blight concluded her unexpected conversation with Dan Orion and his companions, the same agents who also accompanied Michael Cynosa and their successful attempt to steal back the shipment of the arctic serum. Kate was cursing under her breath, most of it directed towards Judith. What the hell was she thinking talking to the enemy like that?

  By some miracle, they had passed the DNA registration without any hiccups. They gathered everything from blood, hair, and fingerprints from the three Prime Sword agents.

  She watched as Judith, disguised as a Prime Sword agent, turned around and made her way back to the rest of the small team. Once Judith rejoined the group, Kate opened up a private channel with her and also extended the channel to allow their third member, Adam Torrent, to listen.

  “What the hell was that?” Kate said through the channel. “Why would you go up and mingle with our primary target? Are you trying to draw suspicion towards us? The mission?”

  “You need to adjust your tone with me,” Judith said calmly. “I only have a shrewd understanding of who Dan and his colleagues are as individuals. And I wasn’t just ‘mingling’ with them. I was observing his two allies during the conversation. It’s called intel gathering. I’m not surprised that a lot of Kodak agents would roll their eyes at such a practice and would find it easier just to bash the next skull they find. But coming from a former Alpha agent, I expected better from you Kate.”

  Kate’s fake ID was Adriana Skill while Adam’s was Clark Dagger. All three of them were disguised as Prime Swords and entering the Combat Games for one reason. The disguises were powered by strange technology used by the Church of Nanotology known as projection theft. Judith didn’t elaborate further on how the tech worked.

  Kate’s superiors had a bizarre fixation on Dan Orion and have approved of the mission to capture and detain him. She knew that after giving her account of her disastrous efforts to stop Dan and his team, they were intrigued by his ability to match the combat abilities of a tier two Kodak agent even as a lowly tier one. Her accounts of Dan’s berserk ability and his strange power to make his enemies combust made Dan an anomaly that must be captured and studied.

  But it wasn’t just Dan they wanted. Judith and Kodak-Cresh wanted to sabotage the potential pool of young candidates for the arctic serum. The Combat Games was the perfect event that attracted many young agents to prove their might in controlled combat. Many were heavily encouraged to attend and pout themselves out there for more career opportunities. And if Kodak couldn’t get their share of arctic serums, then they would eliminate potential candidates. The previous Combat Games tournament had over ten thousand younger agents from inexperienced tier zeros to more seasoned tier ones. And with the Alpha Corp’s recent marketing to boost recruitment, the number of contestants entering this time would break another record.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  The entire mission was Kate’s last hail mary so that her boss Colleen Odyssey wouldn’t execute her for her failures to stop the heist and refuse to keep up her end of their agreement to resurrect her deceased borther in return for her loyalty to Kodak-Cresh. Kate would be screwed if anything didn’t go as planned for this mission.

  “I will admit that while I do have a passing curiosity about the underlings of Jane Sunheiser, I take my missions very seriously. You questioning my moves will not make me yield.”

  Judith was heavy-handed in her own was just like Colleen. Kate pondered about her decision to betray and defect from the Alpha Corp. She had attended the Combat Games on two previous occasions during her time as an Alpha agent and here she was hiding among the next batch of young Alpha agents.

  Judith’s move to talk to Dan directly garnered the attention of Jane Sunheiser, who was still in the building and was standing further back from the lines of agents waiting to register for the tournament. Kate set her eyes on her former squad leader and while Jane didn’t make any moves, she knew that if Jane were to catch on to their presence here, there was no way in hell Kate would be a match for Jane in a fight.

  “If we want to go there, I could also question some of your judgements and decisions regarding this mission. I seem to recall that it was your idea to kill an innocent group of young Prime Swords to allow us entry into this tournament.”

  Kate remembered the identities of the three Prime Swords she lured away from the group to kill in secret. As soon as one of the transports landed, she scanned crowds worth of various agents coming from all Alpha territories to determine who was the strongest and most skilled out of all of them. Since Kate and the rest of the team were stronger and more experienced than any of the agents entering the Combat Games, they needed to adopt identities of sufficiently skilled young agents to blend in better in this competition.

  She wasn’t that much older than the eldest of the group. Even now, she still repeated in her head that the needless deaths of young agents who had nothing to do with their primary objective were necessary.

  And Judith saw right through Kate’s turmoil.

  “We needed our camouflage tech to scan their appearances so that we could adopt their disguises perfectly without having to physically wear their armor. I know neither of you would fit in the armor of these Prime Swords.”

  Judith replied with a low chuckle through the private channel. “So basically you needed these young agents to serve as our meatsuits to get into this establishment without suspicion. Not even meatsuits, you had to hastily shove their bodies into some closet after our camouflage copied their appearances. I don’t think you’re in a position to question my methods of executing a mission. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. You did betray your people after all.”

  Kate knew that jab was intentional and personal. But she wouldn’t dare call out Judith. She knew that this chick was a direct line to Colleen Odyssey and if she slipped up this mission, Colleen would know about it.

  “Oh yeah, and just a reminder to you both,” Judith began. “We all need to significantly hold back our true strength. We don’t need to draw any more attention to ourselves. I’m sure that a tier one Prime Sword throwing another agent across the arena would make people raise eyebrows. Our true goal is not to dominate these weaklings. We need to progress through this event and snatch Dan when the time is right.”

  “Holding back won’t be easy,” Adam said. “But I’ll try.”

  As for Kate, she simply wanted to get this over with.

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