The Viper's Successor

by Somsiddha Deb Saha

  “Right wings and left wings have polarized and instigated to perform duplicity since the agendas came lucid. People think just for riddance they take the path of transgression. Apparently, it’s not. Self advocation is also there, otherwise this discrimination, racism and imperialism won’t arise and become condescending. By the way, stop searching for my trails of voice frequency, your clacking of notifications is too exasperating.”

  “Over confidence and vaunting can be your cause of defeat, you know that?” Navan didn’t stop his operations. Instead of searching for investigation reports, he was working on Jilly Mckenzie’s biomapping.

  “Whatever steps you’re proceeding though that’ll be redundant to conduct my next one. Dissuading me from the destructing Cleocorp and EN TRASTE wont derail me from my mission. Vaccination never stopped and not will, instead I had to resort to other plans. You know where to find me, don’t you, Mr. Navan? I won’t evade this time. This time it’ll be Mano-e-mano. Face to face. Might be my last mission, but for the next 30 years not a single organism will die because of infection and get inflicted by serious disease.”

  “You are a malignant disease yourself, scumbag! Gussied up with a Samurai’s armour does not imply protection of nation. You’re an aspersion, without question!”

  “You will be needed, Mr. Navan. Perhaps you are not like others at all. You are benevolent, and an honest person performed his duties at the battlefield. Aadik would be so proud of his friend, who didn’t left him till his last breath.”

  “Wait…Adik?” Navan was transfixed in shock. So was he present that day at Cambodia, or have somehow gained his personal intels? “How the hell you know him? Huh? “

  “I hold much knowledge about you than you possess. I’m ubiquitous.” The call got disconnected.

  Navan was delirious about from where the Samurai got the source of their solidarity on field. Did he know Adik, or taking vengeance about Adik’s death? Or if its so, then why he’s following the Viper’s footsteps? Why he holds the notions of Viper and philosophical about God? He couldn’t catch that why the Samurai pronounced Adik as Aadik.

  “CLINK, CLINK!” The phone rang again.

  “Check the news sir! My god! This is horrifying!” Sam was shuddering from the other side.

  What’s the next move?

  Location: COD Headquarters

  Time: 8:48pm

  Abominable plights are taking place one after another, leaving no trails of miscreants. Albama’s state mayor received a parcel today morning and found Mr. Fulkan Kane’s decapitated head inside. Proceedings about the sender’s identity has started but no concrete details have found regarding the explosion and this, whatsoever. Dissemination of AD5 vaccine is still suffering from oblivion, leaving a light hope on OKAMI about their launches. Mr.Akatomi assured there will be no snag regarding their inauguration and they will have their cure properly orchestrate among the rest of the world. After the cures of Adage were plundered, OKAMI is the last resort irrespective of Dermatoxia strain is lessening. Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Agency is vehemently carrying out security and protections in entire city and special measures are inculpated to OKAMI, after Alabama suffered such bedlam. On November 2nd ,Tuesday, OKAMI ventures will unveil the distribution of AD5 and its orchestration with Adage’s holding partner Mr. Daryll Finch. Mr. Daryll yesterday had affirmed about the winding up of the company, but because of today’s incident, he had immediately ensconced and meddling of press and media has been incapacitated.

  Navan was heedless to the news as he got exposed to some abacking truth after analysing the programming and biomapping. He supressed it all deliberately and intended to reveal when time comes. He assumed where was Lucy all this time. But he didn’t let that expressed by his gesticulations and mannerism and headed towards mission conference.

  “The blueprint from Vipers lair clicked correctly, eventually then. 6 industries in 6 different locations of the world. But still not ascertained the real mission of Samurai. From the recordings of the phone call, OKAMI is his final target, keeping Lucatrion, EN TRASTE and Cleocorp untouched. But theres no activity at Lucatrion carried out yet. Surely by ‘other protocol’ its reminiscent to explosions.” Hudson was scrutinizing the recording of the phone call of Navan and Samurai.

  “B…but have you seen, sir! How Fulkan was killed mercilessly! How on earth a person can do that?” Sam was again stuttering in astonishment.

  Armun was sitting at a distance where the dimmed light basked half of his face. “Post-mortem reports came from Alabama forensic department just an hour ago. Some galvanized edge weapon slashed his Adams apple to pons. Most probably, the corpse head was 3 days old. A righthanded stroke of the Samurai’s sword, there’s no doubt in that.” He said this at a stretch incisively staring at Navan.

  “Mr. Christopher Klaud, CEO of Lucatrion, EN TRASTE’s founder Helmut Yeager and Cleocorp’s Aaron Dali all were notified about attacks and Z Plus security is guarding them and their families 24/7. The headquarters were also closed temporarily, and operations are being incorporated from classified locations. Our COD detectives at Greece, Italy and Switzerland finding diminutive results even after constant scrutinizing of crime vendetta. Viper protocol is not in a very smooth position but despite the odds, the Red Alert operation is successful. All the remnants of 27 henchmen were encountered in past 72 hours by our COD forces. Still, I have to be answerable to the operational directives for the Viper Protocol, which will be difficult to corroborate with Fulkan’s murder and destruction of Adage, being our operatives present there beforehand.” Hudson explained everyone, then turned to Sam, “Any reports about Jilly Mckenzie?”

  “That’s none other than Ms. Lucy Ferdoria.” Navan blasted the information in front of everyone. “Sam, you also couldn’t find out. Or you have suppressed deliberately?”

  “What are you saying Navan? Lucy? Why would Lucy, being a scientist, perform such sleeper cell activity? Are you out of your mind?” Hudson was stern.

  “B..but there’s no existence of that character, I have synced our Eagle Eye with facial recognitions of every single residents of this world. The process was a bit cumbersome though, but still we flunked to get her real identity.”

  “If only you apply your common sense, Sam. Mr. Hudson, I have a habit of memorizing every facial feature I observe in my lifetime. The moment I saw Jilly Mckenzie’s eyes, I was to the extent confident about it was Ms. Lucy. But I was on dearth of proof, so I searched for her physical appearance. She is not on vacation; she has sacrificed herself destructing Adage. Footages of Lab was also unavailable for me, thus I resorted on the programming of my ‘BALA’ and found out there’s additional storage space created for imbibing motion reactions from the real world, and in every 10 years it gets compressed, just like cloud storages used before. So that means if I’m alive for infinite years, this process of storing and saving information’s are inherent, instead they are in COD’s classified programming language only. Taking a life risk, I took out the neural chip with the help of one of our scientists and with spatial tech, the imageries were solidified. Check this out.” Navan casted the video footage on hologram projector revealing Ms. Lucy’s 99.98% facial resemblance with Jilly Mckenzie’s face. Surely, she had used some facial camouflages, but it was impossible not to get identified via face biomapping, enabling only one person’s face to scan.

  “Holy, mother of God!” Hudson exclamated. “At last Ms.Lucy is to be found out out one of Samurai’s? Wait a sec, lemme, collect the footages from our Lab.” He rushed out of the room, and a couple of minutes later, came back with all footages in affinity of Lucy’s existence in laboratory.

  “It’s redundant to find out any activities, but rather have a look at whom she contacted all this time, being in her own cubicle.” Armun focused on the matter. Shortlisting all her contact footages, they started analysing each of them, one by one. Most of her contacts was with her mom and colleagues of COD.

  Some moments passed, and Navan yelled, “Stop r
ight there! Yes, over here, improve the sound quality!” The footage paused the exact moment where Navan was told to depict his physical kinesthetics as a simulation exercise, and Lucy at a distance was engaged in a phone with someone else, as Navan got enlightened by her statement “ Nobody can stop you from your retaliation now!”

  Sam, with his buldgy eyeballs looked at Navan and said “What she meant by that? You’re a weapon of Samurai? Youre gonna kill us all? That’s why Lucy brought you here?” He was pale.

  “Ohh, please Sam! It’s us who’ve started the rescue operation of soldiers who were deemed to be alive that day at Cambodia. Fortunately, Navan was the only one. But Navan, it’s a point to ponder that how you still made out of blasts of sprockets? And whats the meaning of all this ‘retaliation’ thing? Now its all clear that why Lucy was unavailable just at the moment of our mission at Adage. Somebody had appeased Ms. Lucy to use you as a defensive shield against his immoral activities, which is to be confuted, the Samurai?” Hudson interrogated Navan.

  “Only time can unearth the meticulous identity of the miscreant, Im too vacuous to put any comments on this. And Mr. Hudson, you had seen me during my army days and this time too, its demeaning to think about this marine standing in front of you, Navan Gilman, son of Donnovan Gilman has entered into duplicity. We still don’t know who’s out there and what’s his objective, still we have this unflinching mettle to vanquish the evil for the protection of mankind. If you find me committing such nuisance, I give you full authorization to shoot at my forehead.” The mordant dialogues of Navan made everyone transfixed.

  Operational Synergy

  Location: Tokyo, Japan

  Time: Unknown

  Undisputedly, Samurai will unfurl himself once again at OKAMI, to be alleged by the last conversation with Navan but, ‘his last mission’ was still undecipherable to COD officials. They have got a strident taste of Samurai’s apparition at places letting Navan know what his next target is. So not derailing from the track, this time OKAMI is in grave danger and needed to square off too. The D-Day is after 3 days thus contact with Tokyo Metropolitan Police has been made. Covert strategies for COD have been implemented bolstered by Nutaku Himi, Administrative General of Tokyo metropolitan Police Department, working undercover for COD too. CEO, Mr. Akatomi didn’t put trust on Police department, and as for security measures, technodrones have operated to identify guests from guest lists, apprehend the unidentified and sense imminent threat. These technodrones, named KO3 by the OKAMI ventures, can be called the compressed version of drone-humanoids. With built in advanced AI and user interactive, these KO3 can replace future troops for invasion and infiltration. With no intervention of police and military made the law enforcements of Tokyo a bit convoluted about undertaking the rules by OKAMI themselves.In conformity with Tokyo Police, COD this time planned for espionage instead of providing protections as its diffused howsoever. Nutaku chalked out the details beforehand, to Navan, Armun and Sam at Tokyo in a classified location.

  “Nice to work with you sirs. But in Japan, after Dermatoxia, things have changed completely. With ionized shields at the borders to implying drones for physical works, we’ve come a long way. The objective is to stop Samurai, not to raise alert in our city. We’ve observed the footages of Adage but here you’ll be a criminal too Mr. Navan if you expose yourself at OKAMI. Same goes for you Mr. Armun and Mr. Sam. The death of Mr. Fulkan Kane was obnoxious and so militaries and security departments of entire Japan is focusing on Tuesday’s event to execute leaving no scratch to Mr.Akatomi.”

  “Yes we are hoping for the same too Ms. Nutaku. There are three entrances at North West and East zones. Consists of 260 storeys, the event will be held at the terrarium hall at floor 6. By the way Have you checked out the guest list, Sam? Is there any chance to tweak?”

  “That would be impossible and anytime the KO3 can identify the hacking devices within 500 KMs. Best we can do is to directly gain access to the server room on floor 114 and shut down the self-interactive process. With the user interactive enabled automatically, they cannot operate without any order implemented in their functioning. You need a disguise to blend completely in the event after demobilizing the droids and socialize with the guests at hall. Remember not to get identified.” Nutaku explained.

  “But any choppers and Airplanes are inaccessible in proximity to OKAMI, otherwise it will emanate EMP blasts! Mr. Akatomi, innumerably requested this on his tweeter handles!” Sam was clingy.

  “It’s insurmountable to reach at floor 114 without any air support. Hovercarriers also can’t levitate more than 50 feet from the ground as of now. If only one could gain access, then itll be possible for others too.” Navan blurted in a wistful manner.

  “Anyone over here have any gliding experiences or skydiving? I can send my men too but it’ll be risky for Police compliances and can put serious damage in reputation.” Nutaku eyed to three of them.

  “Gliding? What you are thinking about, ma’am?” Sam furrowed his eyebrows. “And Im not getting why its important to turn the drone mode to user interactive? Wouldn’t it be easy for the Samurai to gain unassailable access inside without messing with the droids?”

  “We have researched deeply about the actions of Samurai by the intels received as well as by ourselves and its difficult to conclude what will be his plans. If one could disrupt choppers, and explode 2 buildings so easily, he could change the command mode of droids too and unleash havoc at OKAMI. And if the EMP attacks will emanates out of the forcefield itll disrupt only the proximity electronics not the droids or power connection inside.”

  “I see!” Navan replied. “So, you are planning for Jetpack entourage of us?”

  “Jetpacks also cannot enter the force field of the EMP, if its not operated in analogue mode. Wingsuits are the last option to put faith on. In a window of 10 mins, get in the server room, put this chipset in the mainframe, eluding from drone cams inside. They can be inactivated for about 3 mins, so within that you need to break the 4-inch fibre glass shells to enter into the room. And Mr. Navan, we came to know that half part of your exoskeleton is machine, so if camouflaged your carnal part, it’d be beneficial for sneaking in too.”

  “And what about me?” Armun was paranoid. “What will I do, supervise them, or guard the droids?”

  “Mr Armun, your task is to surround all entries and exits with our Task Force as soon as the droids get inactive. Secure the perimeter completely. Mr. Sam, as soon as Mr. Navan install the chipset in mainframe, you need to enter from the northeast emergency exit and reach to hall, completely unidentified. Then you must activate mini cams which will scan and recognise the guests and officials inside the hall. The media coverage won’t be live on Tuesday as Mr. Akatomi didn’t allowed any press cams and recorders. Smartphones signals will also get jammed automatically as soon as you enter the field. These carbon fibre mini cams runs on motion gesture and requires no frequency to operate.” She placed three hexagon shaped drone cams on table.

  “Thanks, ma’am, for your cooperation. And yes, this time, the Viper’s successor will be stopped.” Navan was persistent in his approach. “This time, its personal!” he mumbled.

  “Pleasure’s all mine. I shall send the details to chief Hudson and he’ll contact us shortly. By the way, for your protections, I have ordered this special shock resistant and heat absorbent suits with advanced anti-penetration integrity upto 11%.” Nutaku directed her force to pack those up.

  “Surely that’s no Idium, otherwise the face off would have been nice.” Armun chuckled.

  “Seriously, sir, how Villains always gets the best!” Sam toned.

  The Final Showdown!

  Location: OKAMI Industries

  Time: 10:45 am

  Good Morning Tokyo!

  Its Tuesday and Tokyo city will experience the Grand relaunch of AD5 vaccine, temporarily hindered as of the damages and perils suffered by Adage headquarters. But unlike other events, the live video will not be telecasted or streamed in your T
V and smartphones, instead viewers can experience it after the event concludes. Mr.Akatomi showed condolences about Mr. Fulkan Kane’s tragic death and have gone leaps and bound for protection of this event as well as his company. Mr. Daryll Finch have also assured to lessen the price a bit. It’s just a moment hang up with bated breaths!”

  “Mr. Navan! Deploy your parachute when you’re at 5000 feet above the ground. This compressible backpack contains all your essentials for the mission. Your tracking visor helmet will automatically access the altitude and floor no 114 from outside. You need to jump, now!” Nutaku yelled standing at the edge of army airplane with Navan, suited for espionage. Its Tuesday morning and in 45 minutes the event will start at OKAMI, uncertainty still prevails about Samurai’s ghastly appearance. Sam reached in proximity to OKAMI and disguised as pedestrians. Armun and the Force are waiting for the drones to get tweaked by user interactive, waiting approximate 1 mile away from OKAMI headquarters.

  “Hope for the best!” Nutkau showed thumbs up to Navan. Without wasting any more time, Navan took a leap from airplane and activated his wingsuit flaps. He felt despite the weight of his lower body part; it averts the stumble whilst in mid-air. How could Lucy emerge as a villain in lieu of her flawless professional approach towards robotics and Biotechnology? But its no time for floundering in the past. He checked the altitude in his visor helmet and glided towards the way the navigator points.

  The edifice of OKAMI is becoming prominent covered with a translucent obstruction of clouds, When the altitude touched 5000 feet on visor screen, Navan pulled the parachute string and completely sneaked levitating on air as the material is made up of pure reflecting strings that makes the glider completely unidentified. Hovering through, he came closer to the skyscraper.