The insides of the humvee rattled as it almost silently crossed the half desert road made of dirt and scattered rocks of all sizes and shapes. The said rocks crashing and being crunched beneath the tires or bumping on the reinforced-with-iron-slabs bottom of the vehicle were the only sound that indicated that the road was currently being used. There was a total of 12 humvees and half a dozen of military motorcycles, each one placed in between the cars. All the lights were off. This operation required the surprise factor.

Ikusaki Shouichi muffled a yawn with his hand as he stared away into the distance. His body felt sore from being in a sitting position inside of the humvee for six hours straight now. He had been crumped up there since he got out of the airplane and the last briefing before the launch of the mission had been concluded. And he wasn’t a human being patient enough to be sitting for too long.

“Hey, Yasuhisa! How much until we get there?” roared Ikusaki while turning sideways to the driver of the vehicle, his impatience and boredom starting to get the better of him.

“I don’t think it’ll take us much longer to get to the targets,” answered Eki Yasuhisa, his eyes unmoving from the road. A soft smile surfaced in his features. “We have already been ordered to turn off all lights on the vehicles and communication has been minimized to the inside of each squad only. So you’ll soon get to be out there, running free, Shouichi.”

“Pfft! Running free, my ass!” grumbled Ikusaki, once again looking to the road as he adjusted the M16A4 rifle that laid on top of his lap. He anxiously tapped with his fingertip on the barrel as he continued grumbling. “We’ve been suddenly appointed to this oh so secret mission. Forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement on anything that may happen today. And, finally, closed in a freaking airplane, just to land in an unknown place. Should I remind you of what sort of reaction most of the soldiers had when we were informed that we were to infiltrate some sort of lab and take every single person inside of the building into our guard? With full authorization to shoot if they don’t cooperate?”

“You’re making it seem like this is a terrible mission, Shouichi,” sighed Eki as he peered sideways at his fellow squadmate.

“How can you say that when our squad was tasked with the hardest mission of them all!?” almost roared Ikusaki as he once again looked over to Eki. “What the fuck do they mean with ‘recover a group of individuals contained inside of the lab’? Why are there humans being contained in there in the first place? And why the hell are those human beings categorised as XS, as an extremely severe level in terms of international threats!? If I knew it would be like this, I would have refused to accept this mission!”

“You wouldn’t be able to refuse since you were selected without the right to,” pointed out Eki as he slid his hands on the steering wheel to more comfortably grab it. He had been driving for 6 hours straight, after all.

“I know! But I still have the right to complain, right?” groaned Ikusaki with an exasperated voice. He was about to start grumbling once again when the window next to his seat was lightly tapped. Ikusaki readily looked in its direction and saw another member of his squad, Mizusaki Shinobu, making a sign with his hand to urge him to open the window. He almost wanted to congratulate Mizusaki for being able to safely drive his motorcycle with only one hand in that type of terrain. Ikusaki sighed and quickly slid open the window. “What?”

“Murayama-san and Miue-san have asked me to tell you that communication through radio transceiver will be limited to emergency cases only from this point on. Or when we find one of the targets,” informed Mizusaki, his voice slightly raised so it could be heard above the sound of the dirt and rocks being run over by the vehicles. “And~ They also asked me to update you two about the final report about this mission, which they just received from the base~”

“And?” impatiently asked Ikusaki, arching slightly an eyebrow as he stared at Mizusaki.

“There are 5 targets confirmed,” explained Mizusaki, trying to recall all the things that their squad leader had reported to him some minutes ago. “Each one is located on a different floor of the lab, all of them located in the underground area. Our team is tasked with the floors -4 to -6 while the other team will deal with the floors -1 to -3. There are two targets distributed through floors -4 and -5, but we have also been ordered to survey the last floor since they may be hiding an up-until-now-unknown target.”

“Have they already announced what kind of targets they are?” asked Eki as he took a quick glance to Mizusaki, immediately switching his gaze back to the road afterwards.

“Yes, they have,” acknowledged Mizusaki after having released a sigh. He looked to in front of him for a few seconds, to certifying himself that he wouldn’t bump into anything while driving the motorcycle, and then looked back to the insides of the humvee. “Murayama-san said this lab is used by a secret terrorist organization, that goes by the name ‘The Union’. They specialize in human experimentation. The purpose of this lab, in particular, is to create super soldiers. All of our targets are classified as XS level international threats because the lab has dubbed them as full-fledged genetically modified human beings that won’t hesitate to slice your throat open if that is the order they have received. They are basically killing machines in human shape.”

“Hah! Super soldiers? Have the higher-ups gone insane?” snorted Ikusaki, shaking his head slightly in disbelieve. “I see that with all the wars happening around the world, the old coots in the military higher seats have started to believe in myths now. Super soldiers don’t exist. Genetically modified humans, yes. But super soldiers? This is not a fucking manga.”

“It’s not my duty to doubt the orders that I receive from above,” pointed out Mizusaki, shrugging his shoulders a little bit. “If they want to call the targets super soldiers, then let them. I just want to finish this mission and get back to the base so I can continue to pester General Nakatani into giving me a few weeks off. Hopefully with all my limbs and body parts intact.”

“I do agree with you on that one,” acknowledged Ikusaki as he gave a quick glance to the mountain of weapons being stored in the backseat. “I don’t think they provided us with all this crap so we can walk around the lab flaunting our firepower to scare the scientists there shitless.”

Both Eki and Mizusaki nodded their heads in agreement and the demeanour of the three soldiers changed to a more serious and severe one.

Suddenly, the vehicle in front of their humvee started to slow down its speed and then came to a full halt. Their own vehicle came to a stop, as well as the motorcycle riding alongside it. All of them silently observed the humvee in front of them, waiting for the sign that told them that they had arrived at the target location. They saw a small light suddenly being turned on and then quickly turned off once again. The same happened two more times. They knew by heart what would be their next steps.

Ikusaki hurriedly lifted his rifle from his lap and opened the door, not minding that he had bumped it against Mizusaki’s motorcycle and almost threw it to the ground. He walked to the backseat and started putting all of his weapons on his holsters in motions that seemed overly mechanical after only being in the army for three and a half years. He made way for Eki to also ‘suit up’ and walked a little bit further away from the humvee while giving a final check to everything, including the radio transmitter wrapped around his neck and connected to his ear. He would have liked to test if the communications would be done without any problem but a restriction order was a restriction order. As a soldier, it was his duty to follow them at all times.

“Are you ready, Shouichi?” asked Eki, walking over in his direction, one of his hands gently placed on top of his holster.

“Yeah, I am…” sighed Ikusaki, motioning one of his hands up to ruffle his black locks of hair. “What wouldn’t I give to get a cigarette right now… They fucking confiscated them before I boarded the airplane.”

“Ahahaha,” laughed Eki, giving a quick slap to Ikusaki’s back. “They’ll give them back to you after we return to the base. Well, probably… Smoking is an expensive bad habit to have during these times since they are quite hard to find.”

“If you know that, then I know it even better!” grumbled Eki, snapping his neck to release some of the tension that had accumulated in his body during the 6-hour ride. They walked over to the humvees in the front side of the long line of vehicles, searching around through the small crowd of soldiers for their other squad members.

“Ikusaki, Eki!” called Mizusaki all of a sudden. They turned their heads in his direction and saw the soldier waving at them, accompanied by two other, all of them armed to the teeth.

“Are you all ready?” asked Murayama Yamase, the squad’s commander, as he leaned his lower back on the bonnet of the humvee assigned to him. He closely observed his two subordinates as they steadily grew closer to them.

“Yes, sir,” acknowledged both Ikusaki and Eki in unison.

“Mizusaki has delivered you some information, but I’m going to explain you the rest,” announced Miue Satoshi, the second-in-command, while running his eyes through a set of papers. “We were only authorized to read this information when we arrived at this spot so this is new to every squad. We will be running through floors -4 to -6. There are two confirmed targets on the two first ones, both of them locked down inside of individual containment cells. We don’t know their names or ages, just that they are both males. We don’t know for how long they have been kept here in this lab but we do have some info pointing that they are here since young children. As humans used for scientific experiments and as unwilling victims to genetic modifications, they probably don’t have a good experience with other people. Which means they will be a pain in the ass and a bunch of overgrown brats.”

“Pfft… Here comes Miue-san’s catchphrase,” snickered Mizusaki, covering his mouth with his hand to tentatively hide it.

Miue threw a quick glare at Mizusaki and then cleared his throat loudly. “All we have to do is collect those two targets and then survey the last floor in search for any similar target that may have been kept hidden even from our information sources. When we find the first target, situated on the floor -4, Eki, you’ll be tasked to bring him to the first floor above the surface. The target will then be fully restrained in one of the humvees and immediately shipped out of here.”

“Yes, sir,” acknowledged Eki right away, quickly making a salute at the same time.

“The target on the floor -5 will be brought to the ground floor by Murayama, with the exact same procedure,” continued Miue, passing the papers to the man in question.

“Why Murayama-san and not me or Mizusaki…?” asked Ikusaki, looking to the second-in-command of his squad while every now and then glancing to their surroundings.

“We need Mizusaki’s accurate mapping skills and communication channels and your monstrous strength on the last floor. It’s an unknown what we will bump into there so we might as well be ready for any eventuality,” answered Miue, adjusting the rifle located on his back, kept there with the help of a strap. “We may not find any similar human to our targets there. But we also may find one… or two… or more. Simply put, we have no fucking idea what’s being kept there, if anything at all.”

“Nice way of putting it, Miue,” snorted Murayama, throwing the papers to the backseat of the humvee through the open window. He then looked over to all of his squad members, his demeanour suddenly turning more serious. Much more serious than it usually was. “This is a dangerous mission and I know that we were forced to take it out of the blue. But we’re going to successfully complete this thing without suffering any casualty. If anyone is allowed to die, it’s those that are currently inside of the lab and caused all this crap in the first place. Understood?”

“Yes, sir!” acknowledged the other four soldiers, saluting their squad leader.

“Then let’s go take down this shitty thing and return to the base safe and sound,” announced Murayama, starting to run to the front gate of the lab. All the other members followed right behind him. While they had been discussing, another squad had taken it down to open access to the large mass of buildings.