"Sir? Are you... okay?" the pilot stammered.

At first, he thought it was a glitch. A lucky bug in the new nanite combat suit. But as he approached the main reactor building, taking fire from two watchtowers, the truth became terrifyingly clear. Bullets tore through his jacket. He felt the hot, sharp sting of each impact. He grunted. He stumbled. But he did not slow down.

He pulled the trigger. Morozov fell.

Jones didn't run. He didn't hurry. He walked out of the base, past the bodies of the men he'd killed, past the craters from the grenades he'd ignored. The extraction helicopter was waiting on a frozen lake. The pilot's jaw dropped as he saw Jones approach—a walking corpse, clothes in tatters, face smeared with blood, but moving with the casual stride of a man out for a Sunday stroll.

Jones didn't have an answer. He just raised his sidearm, shot the lock off the gate, and walked through.