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invading Sarah’s nose, threatening her to gag. The Confederates rarely trusted even their own people with dangerous weapons, in case they got ideas of desertion. Therefore this fellow was equipped with one of the Confederacy's bulky cannon-shaped stun guns, which had become known simply as "Stunners". It was highly effective in crowd control and detaining troublesome suspects, but only lethal to citizens with weak constitutions.
    Not a problem for Sarah.
    She did a quick check of the thermal imaging in her rear-view for the other guards. When the closest guard had moved far enough for his back to be facing Sarah, she took one step out of her cover. She put her left hand on his right shoulder and her right hand over his mouth. She twisted his head around with a sickening snap. The guard slumped, but Sarah held him up until she could lower him quietly to the ground.
    The two other guards hadn’t noticed.
    She crossed her first victim's arms under his head to look like a classic sleeping pose, just in case. No need to raise any unnecessary alarms just yet.
    Sarah made short work of the two remaining guards. The first went down , choking and gasping, in a cloud of smoke laced with a toxic drug, from a pellet Sarah threw at his feet. The other guard saw and panicked, but with Sarah standing right behind him, she only had to trip his feet to send him sprawling. A swift kick to the back of his head, caving his skull, finished him off.
    ‘Distractin’ them would have been better, Jensen,’ Casey said in her head.
    ‘There’s no guarantee that lab tech, Prewett, was telling the truth,’ Sarah replied. ‘This could all be just chasing after shadows. Besides, the body that fell from the Tower will be getting cold soon and thermal will be useless.’
    ‘Fine,’ said Casey. ‘Then hurry up and get yer ass into position and find out what we’re dealin’ with.’
    Sarah didn’t bother to reply. Casey was in charge of the operation, as he was with almost everything in the Academy, but Sarah and the rest of the students were trained to think for themselves. That included making their own decisions in the field, not only in how to complete an objective, but whether to attempt it at all. The choice every student faced on their first mission was whether they could take a life. While encouraged to spare the Confederates whenever possible, since they were only human after all, the mission objectives came first.
    Maybe Casey was just getting sentimental in his old age , Sarah thought with a smile.
     
    She crouched and crept up to the edge of the building that faced the Tower, which loomed over her. If the broken window was visible from here, she didn’t bother to look for it. She switched on thermal imaging once again. Not the best tool to search for a dead body, but if she had been quick enough, traces of heat would still be visible.
    A soft glow registered below her. There in a dumpster, was the body. She switched her iPC view to regular vision and zoomed in on the torso. The pockets were turned out... and there, his eye socket was empty.
    ‘Damn,’ she breathed. ‘Casey, the target has been searched and his iPC is gone. The mission is a fail...’
    ‘Who’s Casey?’ said Joshua.
    Startled out of her wits, Sarah swiftly drew a short curved blade tightly strapped to her left outer thigh. She whirled around to see a scrawny youth dressed in filthy rags, layered with months old blood stains and grime, holding an eyeball by the optic nerve.
     
     

Chapter 5
     
    A bullet ricochet pinged off a metal panel in the space between Joshua and Sarah, bringing them out of their standoff.
    Joshua flinched and fell to the ground. I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead , he thought. To have come this far...
     
    After that insane jump across the alley he’d run from room to room and down each hallway looking for the way out into the next street. That was far more difficult than it initially seemed, with many of the walls of the empty