Chapter 367 Recement Protocol
Still floating above the world, watching the satellites fall, Aron turned to Nova and said, “Activate the recement protocol.”
[Are you sure, sir?]
“Yes. It’s time for dimir to be put into ce.”
......
Somewhere in Ukraine, near the Russian border.
dimir had been operating as part of the forward forces, clearing the way for Russia’s troops to march on Kyiv. His orders from Russia were clear: sabotage whatever needed to be sabotaged and assassinate whoever needed to be killed to ensure that the Russian troops would have an easy time in their “special military operation.”
He was in an outhouse, standing over the bloody corpse of histest target, a militiamander of a hastily built force consisting of three squads of infantry with a few RPGs and a pile of explosives. Themander wouldn’t have had to die except that he woke up and stumbled out to thetrine in the middle of the night and happened to catch dimir in the act of setting demolition charges to take out the explosives.
As the operative was cleaning his knife, a chirp came from his sses, notifying him that his presence was required in VR. It wasn’t an emergency alert, but he would need to hurry up and finish what he was doing, then find a safe ce to log in. Thus, he finished setting the charges, armed them, and set the timer on the detonator to forty-five seconds. He had always had a ir for the dramatic, so he walked out of the militia camp and was just out of range when the detonation happened, sending an enormous fireball up to the sky behind him as thest remnant of the shockwave made his clothes flutter.
“Take a selfie,” he ordered his AI assistant. Real badasses never looked at explosions, and to him, this was a real badass moment that he wanted to document for posterity’s sake.
[Yes, Mister Drama King,] the assistant replied. dimir could practically hear it rolling its virtual eyes; the two had a good rtionship.
dimir increased his speed and ran to an unupied building nearby, then settled into afortable position and logged into VR.
......
Nyx and dimir had also been working well together, and the shadowy AI was waiting for him when he arrived in her “office”, a recreation of Central Park in New York City. She was sitting on a bench waiting for his arrival.
“You know I’m in an active war zone, right? Wasn’t two crossword clues, a book cipher, and a chalk signal a bit much to make me go through for this meeting?” dimirined as he slumped to the bench beside Nyx and groaned. “I could be shot at any time out in the real world.”
(Ed note: These are all methods spies use to contact each other in shows like Burn Notice or mystery novels. Supposedly they were really used during the Cold War, but I’d like to leave myself off of at least *one* government watch list, so I’ll stress that all of the methods here are from fictional media sources.)
[Get over it, the time dtion here gives me plenty of time to y,] Nyx replied. [Besides, I sent you the non-emergency meeting request, so you should’ve had plenty of time to get yourself to a safe ce before logging in.]
“I did, and I should be fine where I’m at. Why’d you call me, anyway, boss?”
[Orders from above. We’re activating the recement protocol early,] Nyx said.
“Oh the recem—wait. You’re moving it up? I thought there was more time?”
dimir had always had a goal after his reprogramming and return to Russia: to rece Putin. The n was to gain the man’s trust and be groomed as a sessor, as Putin was due toe up on his term limits and would need a sockpuppet to act as the president for a term, while he himself stepped down and took over as prime minister. Then, once he was eligible to run for election again, Putin would “win” the election and be the president of Russia for the next two terms.
“So how will we go about it?”
[As we speak, I have a team in ce. You just blew up a militia supply camp, right? Well, ‘your’ corpse will be discovered there, if anyone cares to look for it. Meanwhile, you’re to undergo a second round of gene engineering, where you’ll be your target. Then, how you rece him is up to you. I suppose I should give you the ‘your mission, should you choose to ept it’ spiel, but honestly... you’re going to choose to ept it.]
“Yeah, yeah, I suppose I would ‘choose’ to ept it indeed,” dimir sighed. “Well, off to work then. Send the details to my sses, boss. Good seeing you, you’re looking great, how’s the weather, how’s the kids, how’s work, and all the rest.” He saluted Nyx, then began his logout sequence.
Nyx sat back on the park bench after dimir left and giggled to herself.
......
After logging out of VR, dimir headed to the rendezvous point, where he would meet with his nyxian support team.
When he arrived, he whistled in the prearranged code and a full nyxian team revealed themselves by dropping their “snuggies”. All five of them were, of course, gorgeous women, and dressed in the bodysuit and vestbo that nyxians used in the field only highlighted that fact. But dimir knew that, just like in nature, the most beautiful things were also the deadliest, so he did his best to remain calm and professional, as well as to avoid any... embarrassing physiological responses.
After all, they may need his head to remain on his shoulders, but his smaller head was nowhere near as safe as that one was.
“Hey handsome,” the nyxian squad leader and honeypot, Cara Williams, practically purred. She had honey-blonde hair that cascaded in perfect curls down over her shoulders and upper back to the bottom of her shoulder des and her face wouldn’t be out of ce in a fashion magazine or walking the catwalk at Fashion Week in Paris.
dimir was already in danger, and his mission hadn’t even begun!