SNAFU: Hunters

Conor Flynn, just as bald as Washington but pale as milk, grinned at Matt across the giant conference room table emblazoned with the eye-and-thunderbolt logo of the International Council on Augmented Phenomena, the elite organization founded through UN-NATO cooperation to combat the threat of Jade and unregulated Gerstner Augmentation. “FNG got an opinion?”

Jeff Hannes froze in his thousand-dollar suit and glared at all of them, his thumb over the ‘advance slide’ button. “Are you implying there are non-stupid Jade users, Washington?”

“Point, sir. But they have to know they’re playing with fire. I mean, look what Gerstner Augs did to the Russian military. A gang’s not going to have that kind of firepower.”

Flynn spoke without taking his eyes from Matt. “Maybe that’s what the other three are for. One goes bonk, the other three take it down before it wrecks the neighborhood. Somebody else Augs up; lather, rinse, repeat.”

Washington pounded a fist on the manila folder that contained his mission briefing. “Are we equipped to deal with that kind of oomph?”

While avoiding Flynn’s unwavering gaze, Matt replied. “Yeah, we are, according to the analytics. If they don’t know we’re coming.” Matt turned to Jeff. “They don’t know, do they?”

Hannes threw up his hands. “Unless they’ve got a mole in this room, they’re clueless, just another Jade gang hopped up on power. The biggest, sure, and they’ve seized way too much territory, but they’re just a gang. And besides, to have a mole they’d have to know we’re operating on American soil.”

Flynn quirked an eyebrow at Matt. “Dibs for fun on the pointy one, New Guy.” His Irish mumble would have been incomprehensible if not for a decade’s friendship, which made the ‘New Guy’ treatment all the more absurd. Their units had fought together in overseas operations and they’d kept in touch in the years since. That Flynn had signed up for ICAP two years before Matt didn’t erase that history, so shouldn’t change their friendship.

Matt glanced from Flynn to the photo jacked from a nightclub security camera, splayed large across the white wall that served as a screen. The largest of the four bonks had augmented himself beyond anything Matt had seen before. At least ten feet tall with hands the size of Christmas hams, he loomed over the scene behind giant sunglasses, massive arms crossed over his naked chest. In lieu of hair, steel studs protruded from the top of his skull in a regular grid. Metal spikes protruded from his forearms, ending in cruel barbs sharpened to a razor sheen.

Flynn stroked his chin with an air of too much theater. “He’s prettier than me. I can’t let that stand.”

Turning to Jeff, Matt tapped the picture. “How has he not bonked out already? Nobody can tolerate that level of Augs.” Bonks had gotten their nickname – which Conor found particularly funny – from the inevitable psychosis that overtook chronic Jade users, the superhuman threat that ICAP had been founded to confront. The more you took, the bigger and badder you got, until the whispers drove you into a killing frenzy you never come out of.

And Jade is addictive, with a recidivism rate over ninety-nine percent.

Psychotics are bad. Psychotics that can shrug off bullets and throw cars are rather worse. The Russian military wouldn’t be a threat for at least a generation.

And now it’s a street drug.

Hurya al-Azwar answered with a roll of her pale-blue eyes. “It’s a matter of time, Rowley. You know it, I know it, he has to know it. Which just makes him that much more dangerous.” A scar ran from her left temple back into her short blonde hair. It, and the missing quarter-inch off the top of her ear, spoke of a life on the streets of Detroit before two tours as a Marine in the sand box, before Jade and augmentation and ICAP, before the regenerates that would heal any damage short of death without mark or scar and in seconds or minutes instead of months.

Five years his senior in ICAP, she’d seen dozens of her colleagues bonk out, had to put far too many of them down, and her first-generation regenerates put her at a higher risk than any of them. Augmentation protocols had improved as scientific understanding increased, but everyone in the room ran the risk of psychotic, ravening insanity. Everyone but their boss.

Jeff’s constipated grimace pulled them away from the picture. “Look, we’ve got four heavily-augmented threats and at least sixteen who might be normals, or might just not be showing. I’m bringing in Platt and Karle,” he raised his voice over their groans, “and giving Karle operational discretion on this one.”

“Why do you hate us?” Flynn asked.

Jeff ran his tongue over his teeth. “Karle’s got a better success rate than any of you. I want you all back alive, and there’s something about this,” he waved his hand at the scattered pictures, “I don’t like at all.”

Washington sighed without looking up. “Feel the love, man.”

* * *

Matt eyed the sunglasses in Flynn’s proffered hand and shook his head. “Those make me look like a cop.”