“Why are you here? Answer me.”

  Brenda wondered why her recruit, accompanied by a female recruit, had arrived at her command post looking like he had seen a ghost. His ghastly expression did not match the joyous vibe she expected of soldiers looking forward to their graduation.

  “Ma’am–”

  “I believe you have someplace else to be at this moment,” Brenda furrowed her eyebrows intently to convey the severity of his negligence of duties as a soldier. “As your commander, I want to know why I should not punish you for neglecting your orders.”

  Neptune had run out of breath, sprinting the final mile (just meters) to reach the operations room, where its air conditioning helped cool him down from the stuffy air in the lower halls. He panted loudly, barely catching his breath to inform his trusted commander of the terrifying news he had unravelled.

  “Ma’am, I have something important to tell you.” With all the heart he could muster, he pleaded. “Please hear what I have to say.”

  The operations room belonged to the days when the stadium held domestic and international competitions before the fall of North Atlantea. During those days, nations organised large-scale events in this stadium due to its size to accommodate a massive capacity. The international visitors who visited the North reached an astronomical number annually, gaining the stadium a reputation as the premium venue for organisers.

  Neptune marvelled at the operations room’s setup. It had massive monitors displaying different sections–from the stands to the entrance gate to the lower halls and parts where he had no access. The lights reminded him of a submarine setup, with black walls and minimal lighting, where the monitor’s light acted as the primary light source. Several soldiers fashioned a light green beret like Lieutenant Reynolds, likely infantry troopers, were stationed at each control station and tasked with monitoring various strategic points of the stadium for hostile elements and suspected terrorist activities.

  Each control station had several monitors displaying sections of the stadium and Neptune couldn’t help but notice the crushed empty energy drink cans stacked at the side of each trooper’s table. He surmised they had worked overnight to ensure the graduation ceremony went as planned–from the setting up to showtime.

  “But first. Did you receive orders from your commanders? Yes or no?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I received orders from the deputy commanders earlier.”

  Brenda whipped out a piece of paper listing the duties of all recruits not participating in the march. Before she allowed her recruit to explain himself, she had to remind him of his assigned duties that he discarded without authorisation.

  “What happened to your task of escorting the guests to their respective zones in the stands?”

  Neptune knew he had to cut to the chase while not overstepping his boundaries as a recruit.

  “Ma’am, I don’t have time to explain why I’m not with the soldiers on light duty, so I’ll keep it brief.”

  Brenda left her table and stood directly in her recruit’s face. Despite her height being shorter than her recruit’s, her authority made him shudder a little before he found the footing to match her gaze. Despite all that, she felt his resounding tone extremely intriguing. It seemed he had set his mind on something and would not back down no matter what.

  “I’ll allow you to speak, but do not waste my time.”

  “Ma’am, let me explain. You are the only person I can trust with this information. I am taking a gamble by being here.”

  “Gamble? You’re just a recruit.”

  “Trust me please.”

  Taking a gamble meant her recruit trusted her as a commander and a senior soldier. But after peeling away all of those layers, she knew her duties first and foremost. She had to inform her trusted recruit of the dire implications of his selfish decision-making.

  “Recruit Smith.”

  Commander and recruit locked eyes without blinking even once.

  “As your immediate superior, I must inform you of the implications of your decision to disregard the orders given to you earlier. Let me remind you that not carrying out orders given by your superiors makes you liable to get charged with insubordination. Do you understand?”

  A world-ending event would take place if nobody took the appropriate action against it. He knew the commanders lacked the foresight to plan for a terrorist attack, let alone one that commenced hours ago. The terrorists, whom Neptune speculated to be a group, were sufficiently prepared to execute their job at any moment. He understood time was of the essence; any word he exchanged from this point on had to be precise.

  “I understand, ma’am. I believe this information I’ll relay to you is of utmost importance. It is so important that I am willing to forego everything to ensure you hear it firsthand.”

  He knew to serve the coup-de-grace with a tinge of choking sprinkled in his words.

  “Have I ever disappointed you before?”

  Like a maestro conducting a perfect symphony, he knew his commander felt her heart skip a beat.

  “No, you have not,” Brenda knew her recruit had something important to inform her, desiring to test his will and courage before spilling the beans. “I’m all ears.”

  Not withholding his words, Neptune declared. “Ma’am, I suspect there is a terrorist attack.” For a split second, he caught his commander’s eyes enlarging.“And we have the evidence to back it up.”

  “Wait.” Brenda walked over to her master station to observe the areas under surveillance. She then turned around, gesturing for him to join her at the station. She then turned toward the other recruit. “Recruit, wait outside the door.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Julia contemplated whether she should bid farewell to Neptune and decided against it, leaving to wait outside the operations room as ordered.

  “Recruit Smith, come here. Let me show you the full extent of this operations room.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “In this room, terminals are linked to surveillance cameras connected to various strategic locations within the stadium. With that, we can monitor everything in real-time.”

  The master station, with its various cables connected to ports all over the room, appeared like a Kraken with tentacles gathering feed from all data points. Even with his experience using computers with superior capabilities in the research institute, the amount of brain capacity to take in that massive inflow of information was something Neptune could not fathom. Only an artificially enhanced humanoid or machine was adept at such information processing. Or a human augmented with nanomachines. It would be paramount to suicide if humans attempted to analyse the rapid information.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “I don’t see any suspicious elements at any corner. Look at this,” Brenda pointed at the screen hosting views from all over the stadium. “This master station has a remote view of everywhere. If there is going to be a terrorist attack, my troopers would have informed me of it before anyone else.” She then pointed to her troopers sitting in their respective cells.

  “Just a second.”

  Neptune tried to focus hard on the master station’s screen and assimilate his mind with the machine’s consciousness–a Faustian bargain to harness the information available to decipher the truth.

  Okay, this panel shows the soldiers having lunch.

  Alright, they’re throwing the trash away, OK?

  This panel–oh, they’re waiting for their turn to join the parade.

  Okay, another group of soldiers is having lunch.

  Brenda stood in silence as she observed the pupils of her recruit transform into the physical manifestation of a processing terminal absorbing this vortex of insanity, becoming symbiotically linked with the master station’s artificial mind. It was as though she had witnessed history playing out again, where its citizens lost their humanity by augmenting themselves with their creation’s allure in the name of progress, innovation and immortality.

  “Recruit Smith.” She tried to call out his name as the smile on her recruit contorted into an ecstasy-filled sadistic smirk–as though the hive mind within had assimilated his consciousness into its lower-level frequency. “Hey, I’m talking to you.”

  The operations room had something weird about it. The feeling of someone tampering with it seemed impossible, but after spending a minute observing the footage, Neptune finally arrived at the definitive conclusion.

  “Ma’am.”

  “What is it?”

  Neptune watched the same group of soldiers consuming their lunch, throwing their trash in the same manner–only to be repeated. Then, he saw two panels of soldiers holding their rifles in an identically odd pattern. If two groups had identical behavioural patterns, he would believe in synchronicity. However, should a third panel display another group of soldiers holding their rifles in that manner? And a fourth at that? The revelation was too ridiculous to be true.

  The tornado of binary and machine language would destroy the unprepared, but somehow, it did not affect him. Pulling himself out of the abyss, Neptune, with a sense of unease at the back of his mind, faced his commander to share his damning inference.

  “Ma’am, the footage is tampered with.” Neptune wished his eyes played tricks on him as he pulled himself back from the ritualistic assimilation, seemingly unscathed from the madness. “All these videos are prerecorded.”

  “A-are you sure you’re ok?” Brenda felt fear rising under her belly. After that strange immersion with the machine, she had become more concerned with her recruit’s mental state.

  “What do you mean?”

  Brenda brushed off her oversensitive remarks, snapping back to her professional self again. “Recruit Smith, are you sure about the tampering?” Brenda looked incredulously at her recruit before she gestured for him to move aside. “Where did you derive that conclusion from?”

  With his fingers, Neptune pointed at three panels in succession on the master station. “These three panels. If you would like a fourth one, here’s the one.”

  “What’s next? What am I supposed to spot?”

  “Their movements.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “This is still not enough–” Brenda noticed something odd as she scrutinised the panel intently. “–Wait. Hold on.” She widened her eyes in shock. According to the time stamps, the CCTV footage captured and displayed on her monitor looked tampered with. “How about the other nineteen panels?”

  “Ma’am, is this not sufficient?”

  “I want you to know I believe you, but you must show me more evidence.”

  Neptune had prepared additional evidence and pointed at one definitive panel, “Ma’am, where is this CCTV monitoring?”

  “This is directly outside the operations room. Why do you ask?”

  “Outside.” Neptune’s jaw dropped as he repeated his commander’s words.

  “Yes, outside of this operations room.” Brenda noticed her recruit’s ghastly expression. “Is there a problem?”

  “Ma’am,” Neptune hesitated when he finally put two and two together, “You mean outside here…as in outside right now?”

  “Yes. Is something the matter?” Brenda asked quizzically. She felt a cold shudder as reality started contradicting each other.

  Neptune felt a gigantic lump in his chest. He wanted to be proven wrong, to know this was a bad nightmare, but the evidence appeared too glaring to look away. “There should…”

  The most damning evidence yet.

  “...Be a recruit outside your operations room now.”

  The footage shows the room’s entrance, from the hallway to the door’s entrance, containing a group of soldiers that shouldn’t be there–male soldiers–when this section was strictly assigned to female soldiers. Furthermore, Julia was nowhere in sight in the footage.

  “Why are there–” Brenda choked on her words. “–That recruit is supposed–”

  Neptune stepped back in shock as his commander stood up and slammed the table with an earth-shattering force.

  “Everyone! All of you wake up now!” Neptune knew she had gone mad, furious at her troopers sleeping at their job and not shouldering their duties responsibly.

  Stunned by their commander’s sudden outrage, the troopers slowly opened their eyes from their various states of rest in their respective cells. Some were slumped over their chairs. And some had slept by leaning forward. They turned their attention toward her with a half-awake look, further infuriating her.

  “The footage has been tampered with. How can all of you not notice it?” Brenda snapped at her soldiers’ sloth-like behaviour. Regardless, she still kept her composure.

  “Are you serious?”

  “How did they temper it…?”

  There was a mixed response from her troopers.

  “...All of you–”

  If she were to punish her soldiers, it would only waste time. Especially with time being this tight, Brenda knew she had to be rational and prioritise her soldiers’ cohesiveness.

  “Team. Proceed to draw arms and muster back in a minute. Carry on!”

  “““Yes, Ma’am!””” The troopers jumped out of their seats and scrambled towards their equipment area. Handling a rifle sounded like music to their ears, jolting them awake instantly.

  “Neptune.”

  Brenda finally called Neptune by his first name when the room cleared out. Neptune remained as cool as a cucumber, not wanting to treat it as a big deal.

  “Yes, Lieutenant Rey–”

  “You can call me Brenda, but only when we’re alone. I know you and Boris are on a first-name basis.”

  Neptune struggled to find the words to say.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “This is too sudden.”

  Brenda placed her hands on her perfect waistline. “Do you want me to give that to you as an order?”

  “Sorry to ask, but are you jealous?”

  Brenda had unknowingly tilted her head to the side, closing her eyes to show the girlish antics she thought were suppressed due to her rank.

  “Eh–What?! No! I’m not! I just–never mind.”

  Neptune bowed deeply. “Thank you for believing me.”

  “Neptune, we don’t have time…”

  “Yes, we don’t.”

  Brenda rested her soft hand on Neptune’s shoulder, rejuvenating his soul from all insecurities. He felt his beating heart gradually slowing down as the invisible burden placed on him as the executioner eased away.

  “I know you’re tense. I’m here as your commander to ensure you, my precious recruit, graduate today. Don’t forget that I’m also here, out of my capacity, because I trust you–”

  “Ma’am!”

  “We’re back, Ma’am!”

  Brenda coughed out purposefully to snap herself back to reality. That switch in demeanor was executed so well that Neptune wondered what other tricks she had up her sleeves. The troopers returned to her, decked out in their SBOs. Their light-green beret, the mark of an infantry soldier, stored in their pockets, with the helmet at their sides, ready for their commander’s next orders.

  “Ma’am, full strength accounted and ready for your next order!”

  Brenda nodded at Neptune before fully switching to her professional, business-like mood, knowing the fate of the graduating soldiers rested on this next order.

  “There is a suspected terrorist attack in the stadium. Due to our faulty equipment, we must conduct manual venue checks. We do not have confirmation of the details, but we should do our best to ensure today’s ceremony carries on as scheduled. With that in mind, let’s move out!”

  “““Yes, Ma’am!”””