Green chrome tore through monster flesh as Willow's Thanatos unit made short work of the Aberrant's insectoid limbs. The monster flailed, shrieking ineffectually as it made a dying gasp for life, writhing and twitching as it fell to the ground of the inner-city residential street.

Iris breathed a sigh of relief, and lowered her gun.

It'd been a bit of an ordeal, hunting the beast through the centre of New Gloucester, but Willow was very good at her job. Iris had a lot to learn; it was pretty cool to watch a master at work.

"Confirmed kill," Willow announced. She wiped a few stray strings of gore off of her knives, and stowed them.

Iris holstered her own weapon and bounced up to a standing position. "Nice!"

"Not nice," Willow said flatly. "This was sloppy work. Especially on your part."

Iris winced. That was a harsh rebuke, considering it was only her third mission. Surely she was deserving of a little credit; not everyone can fall out of bed as perfect as Willow clearly did.

Doctor Klein's voice came a little crackly over the radio. "Job done. Save it for the debrief."

Willow nodded, a little grudgingly. "Understood," she said. "Returning to—"

"Hold on." Colonel Adler sounded tense and weary. Clearly the mission was dragging for him as well. "We're getting reports of further Aberrant activity, not too far from your position."

Already? Usually there were at least a few days between attacks.

Klein spoke next. "Sending the co-ordinates to you now."

Fortunately, these co-ordinates were a fair bit more precise than the last set. It took Iris and Willow only a few minutes to find the second Aberrant, clinging to a billboard advertising fast food a few streets from where they'd fought the one before. It was similar to the first, with a dozen bug-like arms and legs splaying out in all directions, piled haphazardly upon each other like disordered rows of shark's teeth. It chewed at the edge of the billboard with a multi-segmented jaw, and chittered unpleasantly.

Iris shuddered involuntarily, the reflex passing to her unit like her second skin was crawling. She opened fire, sending a volley of pulse rifle fire at the points where the limbs met the body. Willow followed in quick succession, aiming for the six, octopus-like eyes on the top of the monster. Bursts of crimson blood erupted from the wounds, and the beast slipped from the billboard and landed on the street below with a crash, cracking the tarmac of the road.

As horrible as it was, it was kind of refreshing to fight one so vulnerable to gunfire. But it wasn't dead yet.

The Aberrant leapt to its manifold feet and charged madly at Iris' legs. She yelped reflexively, tried to kick it off, tried slashing with her knife, but it was too late: the monster was already wrapped around her knees with half of its limbs as it scratched at her belly with the others.

She screamed.

"Amateur," Willow sighed, like it was the most vulgar swear she knew. She raised her own gun and shot the Aberrant three times, right in the middle of its body. It fell limp and slipped off Iris' unit like wet mud.

Iris couldn't help but kick it, to make sure it was dead. That was far too close for comfort.

"Why are you even here?" Willow growled.

"You don't have to be a bitch about it," Iris snapped back.

Immediately, she regretted saying anything. Willow was right to be angry; Iris was not competent or prepared for this shit.

But actually, no. She wasn't right at all.

"Excuse me?"

Iris turned to face her comrade. "We're supposed to be a team. I'm trying my best here."

Willow glared at her; it was apparent even through the eyeless face of her Thanatos unit. "If your best isn't good enough," she said, "then you should go home."

Of all the—

"Save it!" Adler yelled over the radio. "This is not the time or place for debate." He sighed. "There's been another incident."

Another one? They were still tired from the first two. How long would this go on for?

"Several, actually," Doctor Klein said. "Sending you the co-ordinates for the nearest one. We'll send conventional military to the others, for now."

Iris sighed. "Okay," she said. "Let's go."

Things went on like this for a while: a bug here, another there, the occasional catfight punctuating what was otherwise a pretty dull job. None of the Aberrants were any real threat, so long as they kept their distance — they'd learned that lesson well by now — but by the time the sun was starting to set, Iris was feeling pretty exhausted. What exactly was going on here? Was it ever going to end? And, maybe most importantly… how much longer could they last?

Of course, you can only be so tired for so long before you start fucking up.

It happened quickly. Iris and Willow were approaching another of the bug-Aberrants from behind, trying to get a good line of sight of it nestled between rows of balconies jutting out of a a multi-sectioned block of flats. Iris was approaching from the east, and Willow from the west, ostensibly so that each could watch the other's six. But Iris found her attention wandering for a moment, and ended up watching helplessly as another Aberrant leapt from the top of the building, landing on the front of Willow's rifle. Iris shot it dead — moments too late to stop it from destroying the barrel.

"Shit." Willow dropped the now-useless weapon and reached for her knives.

Iris was kicking herself. That was a stupid mistake.

"What happened?" Klein asked.

Willow sighed. "My gun's out of commission. I'll have to come back for a replacement."

"I'm afraid that may not be possible," Klein said.

"What? Why?"

To Iris, the answer was obvious. She gestured with her gun. "Look."

At the end of the road, a dozen Aberrants were heading toward them in a rough, swarm-like formation, climbing over one another as they trampled cars and smaller buildings. On the other side, yet more Aberrants, all of the same vaguely insectoid form. The noise of their movement built gradually, but steadily, an ominous chittering and crashing coming together in a crescendo that peaked, in dreadful dissonance, as the monsters opened wings and took to the sky.

Iris wanted to panic. But there was no time; instead, she started shooting, firing a volley into each swarm as it approached. It didn't seem to do much good.

Willow readied her knives, ineffectually brandishing them at the coming horde.

"Shit," she said. "We can't take all of this."

There was a moment of hurried discussion over the radio, too rushed and quiet for Iris to make out any of it. Then, Adler spoke.

"Retreat for now. We're deploying Seventeen."

Retreat didn't go well. Getting out of there was easy enough: as mobile as these Aberrants were, Thanatos units were still pretty fast, and two minds thought more tactically than a swarm of apparently-mindless monsters. But finding safety was another matter, especially as the swarm started to spread out into all the nooks and crannies of the city, what few there were in a city as centrally-planned as this. It might have been easier if Iris was on her own, rather than hamstrung by having to protect a disarmed teammate. Especially one who seemed to hate her guts.

They were pinned down at a crossroads, with four of the insect-Aberrants on each side, when Amanita arrived like an avenging angel. Purple chrome glistened in the afternoon sun as she somersaulted over a residential block and into the fray. Her lower left arm was still missing, wires and hydraulics barely patched together around the hastily-sealed wound, but it didn't slow her down one bit; she thrust her knives into two of the Aberrants before shooting two more with her rifle. Bug-goo exploded like jam across the streets.

Iris leapt to her feet and drew her own knives, charging another Aberrant and tearing into it with bloody glee. Now it was three-on-three: far better odds.

"What took you?" Willow demanded.

Amanita's answer was simple. "Tests." She punctuated the word with another volley, obliterating another of the Aberrants. Two left.

Amanita really was a badass when she wanted to be.

Not to be outdone, Iris kept on the attack, emptying the rest of her pulse rifle's charge into the remaining two Aberrants. She surveyed the remnants as she reloaded: all dead. Good.

"What's the plan now?" she asked.

Willow stood. "We keep fighting, of course."

"Negative," Adler said, his voice stern. "You need to come back to base. Let the other two take it from here."

"What?! All I need is a new gun and I'll be ready to go."

"That's an order."

Willow sighed loudly, but did as she was told. It wasn't a long journey out of the Aberrant-infested area, but it was a tedious one. Amanita swept ahead, clearing any pockets of Aberrants before Willow got to them, while Iris took up the rear.

Iris was torn. On the one hand, she was pretty happy to see Willow go back to base; working with her was exhausting. But on the other hand, this was going to be an uphill battle even with three of them, let alone with just her and Amanita. If they were going to come out of this on top, they needed to be smart about it.

"We need a plan," she said. "Fighting these things head-on isn't working."

"Agreed," Adler said. "Anna, do you have any insights yet?"

There was a pause before Doctor Klein replied. "I don't know. This incident is very much an outlier. Usually, we only have see one Aberrant at a time, not a whole army. We're going to have to rethink a lot about our broader strategy if this kind of thing keeps happening."

Almost idly, Iris shot a couple more of the flying Aberrants, watching them as they drifted to the ground in a spiral pattern. They really were like insects, a plague of locusts cast upon the city of New Gloucester. Or perhaps a colony of ants.

"Wait." A thought was starting to form in Iris' head. "You said this is different to how it usually is, right? Well… what if it isn't different?"

"What are you talking about?" Klein asked.

Amanita nodded slowly: clearly she was getting it, too. "Ants. We need to find a queen."

"I mean," Iris explained, "maybe they're all the same because they're all the same. Like, we're fighting them as a bunch of individuals when they're actually all one thing."

"…a hive consciousness?" Adler said. "It's… no, that would actually make sense. It would mean… we'll have to overturn a lot of our assumptions on how Aberrants form, but…"

"But," Adler finished, "it gives us a handhold here."

"Right!" Iris said. She beamed with pride at her own idea. "Find the queen and kill it, and the rest drop, well… like flies."

"You think you can do it?"

Good question. "Well," she said, "we can give it a try."

"We'll do it," Amanita added. "It's a bug hunt."

"The 'queen' will probably be somewhere well-protected," Klein told them. "Possibly inside a building, or underground. We'll work up a list of candidate locations, based on anywhere the Aberrants seem particularly interested in protecting. But it'll help if you can try stirring them up a bit, try to provoke some defensive behaviours."

"Right," Iris said.

"Be cautious," Adler advised. "We're one man down, and Seventeen is still in need of repairs. The last thing we need is another casualty."

Iris and Amanita nodded, and readied their weapons. It was time to kick the hornet's nest.

The base control room was a flurry of activity. On one side of the room, a group of analysts were plotting the outbreak on a map and attempting to triangulate an origin point. On another, a team of technicians were monitoring the data from the Thanatos units with increasing agitation. In the middle, the command staff stood, watching video feeds from the combat, pondering their next move.

Klein was worried. Not just because of how different this situation was: no, they'd already run this sort of scenario in planning, developed a whole host of strategies for it. They'd known this kind of thing would start happening sooner or later, that the attacks would get more and more frequent. A hive scenario wasn't something that they'd anticipated, but it made things easier.

Even better that Iris' quick thinking had worked it out. Smart girl.

But: the flux figures were high. All three pilots were under incredible strain. The P-matrices were reaching the limits of their capacity, and sooner or later, something bad was going to happen.

"Jack," she said. "We need to pull back."

Adler looked at her quizzically. "We can't pull back. We've only just grasped the advantage."

"It's too soon. We're not ready." She sighed, fingers twitching for a cigarette. "They're not ready."

Lieutenant Searl looked up from his station. "Colonel, with respect, I agree with Doctor Klein. I'm worried about these figures."

"Lieutenant," the Colonel rumbled. "I know you have a soft spot for these girls, but—"

"It's not about a soft spot," Searl said. "It's, well…"

"A.D.," Klein said, simply.

That was the thing about Thanatos. It was easy to look at the technology, the machinery, the giant bloody robots, and think that was the whole of it. But the project was nothing without its pilots. Quite literally.

"Anna," the Colonel said. His tone was flaccid compared to his usual approach. "You can't be serious." But his expression betrayed his words.

Klein pushed the "talk" button in front of her.

"Iris? Amanita? We need you to pull back."

Iris was busy putting a pulse round through the body of another bug when the radio crackled.

"Iris? Amanita?" It was Doctor Klein. "We need you to pull back."

"What?" Iris responded. "Why? We haven't even found the queen yet."

Klein's voice was flat, almost totally emotionless. "We've nearly triangulated a location. We'll be sending in conventional military to deal with it. You two need to come back to base. Now."

It didn't make any sense. Why stop now, just when they had the upper hand? Surely…

"What aren't you telling us?" Iris' thought was so loud that it came out over the comms.

Amanita looked over at her from her position, crouched behind a shopping centre. "Iris…"

Fuck it. In for a penny.

"What aren't you telling us?" she repeated. "What's so dangerous that you're risking whole squads of troops instead of us?"

The comms line was open, but Klein was silent. After a while, someone spoke: it was Harry Searl.

"You'd better tell them, Doctor."

Iris frowned. "Tell us what?" She shot another couple of Aberrants almost as punctuation for her query.

Over the radio, Klein sighed. "About Absolute Deterritorialisation."

For a pair of words that meant nothing to Iris, they certainly carried an ominous weight.

"We think of Thanatos units like they're giant robots," she continued. "But they're not. The Thanatos project is not a robotics programme, and I am not a roboticist."

Iris looked down at her arms: all four of them. They looked pretty robotic.

But Klein continued. "The Thanatos project is, in fact, a way to unlock the hidden potential in the human body and mind, and to harness it for the protection of humanity. Did you ever hear someone say we only use ten percent of our brains?"

Iris rolled her eyes. "I heard someone say that was nonsense," she said. She was smart enough to know that.

"It is nonsense," Klein agreed. "It's a misconception stemming from the fact that the neurons in the brain never all fire at once. Well, there's a name for what happens when they do: we call it a seizure."

Yikes. "And that's 'Absolute Deterritorialisation'?"

"No," Klein replied. "A.D. is much worse. Ordinarily, the potential in the human body and mind is contained by a host of factors, social, physical and medical. Thanatos works by pushing you past those limiting factors, but the only way that can be safe is if it also puts another limit in place. A.D. is what happens when that limit fails."

"What happens then?" Iris asked.

"Frankly," Klein said, "we don't know. And judging from the data we're getting from you, I suggest you return to base now if you don't want to find out."

"We're sending in conventional military to finish the job," Adler added. "Come home. Now."

Reluctantly, they did.

This document is classified SECRET BRIAR

Unauthorised dissemination of the information in this document is a criminal offence under the Official Secrets Act

If you have received this document in error, dispose of it by burning or shredding and report the breach immediately to the Ministry of Defence Data Breach Hotline (08081 570626)

Excerpt from transcript of mission recording, Operation Cowan

Off-site senior officer Colonel Jack Adler

On-site officer commanding Corporal Michael Benton

Other personnel:

• Lance Corporal David Keller (second-in-command
• Private Fiona Walker (technician)
• Private Georgina Hayes (gunner)
• Private David Wallis (marksman)

Cpl Benton: Getting to the co-ordinates now. Christ, it stinks down here.

LCpl Keller: Well, it is a sewer.

Cpl Benton: Shut it, Keller. Colonel, we're awaiting your orders.

Pte Walker: Look at the water. Something's moving.

Col Adler: Don't waste any time, Corporal. Set your charges and get out.

[unidentified sound]

Pte Hayes: [inaudible; line goes dead]

Pte Walker: Fuck! It's got Hayes!

Cpl Benton: Open fire!

[gunfire]

Pte Walker: Shit!

[sound of splash]

Pte Walker: [fuzzy] Goddamn it, let her go you [inaudible]

Pte Wallis: Is that a—

[gunfire]

Col Adler: Drop the charges and get out!

LCpl Keller: We've lost Hayes. Walker!

[further splashing]

Pte Walker: Fuck, I couldn't just [inaudible]

Cpl Benton: It's okay. We're leaving now. Drop the charges and run.

Pte Wallis: What's happening to Hayes?

[unidentified sound]

Pte Wallis: Jesus, she's—

[gunfire]

Pte Walker: No, don't hurt her!

Col Adler: We've lost video feed! What's going on?

Cpl Benton: Hayes just started [inaudible] into some kind of [inaudible]

Col Adler: Open fire. That's not Hayes any more.

Cpl Benton: Open fire! Open fire!

[sustained gunfire]

Cpl Benton: Retreat!

LCpl Keller: Fall back before I drag you back, Fiona!

Pte Walker: [crying] Georgie…

Pte Wallis: It's okay, Fi, come on.

[hurried footsteps]

Cpl Benton: Everyone okay?

Pte Wallis: Think so.

Pte Walker: [sobbing]

Cpl Benton: Colonel, the charges are set. Returning to base.

[footsteps]

LCpl Keller: Christ. What a mess.

Next time:

The secrets of the Thanatos project are many. Anna Klein works into the night, calculating and devising a better means of fighting the Aberrant epidemic. But what are the hidden costs of the programme, and what toll will it take on the pilots and those around them?

Find out in the next exciting episode. Episode Six: Decoding!