Here, this is part of her story, might clarify a few other things a bit the setting is roughly 2053.
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The smoke had begun to clear. In the air, the smell of petrol still hung as the embers burrowed their way into the ground. Ashes and crumbling brick of a large family house razed to the ground were all that remained as the sun rose to light the sky in a pale shade of pink. Gathered were neighbors, fire brigade men, an ambulance, and the only surviving member of the household. Fiore stared at it. Faces flickered by in the dying flames that sputtered in and out of life at random. An arson attack. Random, supposedly. Gazing at the broken glass, the small part of her that was conscious enough to recognize the dream, ground its teeth in wild fury at the bought lies. Tears slipped down her cheeks, but she was watching herself through someone else’s eyes. The nightmare played on, uninterrupted. The misery was a dull ache that burned with the same passion the fires had. People tried to comfort her, but she turned them away rudely. Like a ghost she walked where hallways had once been, tenderly touching what may have been a couch or rail, or wall. Only hours earlier, as the fire raged uncontrollably, had she heard the screams. Agony knotted her stomach again. Fits overcame her body as the uncontrollable shaking began anew. Ash and dirt covered her face and hands, littered her hair. Her eyes were red and raw, saliva and mucous mingled with tears as she found herself on her knees, bowed over in what was once her kitchen. Her nails raked over her arms, as if physical pain might be able to allay what was inside. Her fingers could only dig deeper, unable to bring any level of satisfaction forth. From her late night, she had come back, exhausted, disheveled. To find the scene of chaos in the place she had been going to for peace and solace had ripped her inner core. Her car had rolled to a halt against the sidewalk as she already ran towards the firemen, three of whom grabbed her and held her back. They told her the screams were gas, the effects of flame and heat on various objects. Why then, did two sound so distinctly familiar? And, helpless, they had restrained her as her strength left her with the final collapse as the top storey came crashing down. Unable to stand, unable to speak, those holding her back suddenly had to hold her up. Fury and a dozen other emotions became a torrential downpour that eventually cemented into a single word: loss. The four letters begot far more. No piece of understanding or reason took place in her mind as a numb sensation took over. Surreal, like a dream, nothing made sense. Lilia. Damien. Gone. And she had done nothing. Could do nothing. Except walk amongst the cooling ashes, alone and bereft. Echoes of their screams lingered in her mind. She found it impossible not to imagine the pain they had gone through in their last moments. Fire was, she had always thought, one of the harshest ways to die. Smoke hadn’t knocked them unconscious first, she knew it in every fiber of her being. It was them she had heard, just before the end. That horror struck her worse than anything she had seen in the field. It couldn’t compare to it at all. Misery was something she had always seen etched into the lines of other people. Never before had it dealt her a blow like this. Her elite, yet artificial training, had kicked in enough that she ordered herself back to the military base before too long. To find out more. An ulterior part of her, the emotional side, thirsted for revenge already. The stain of sin was already rampant, after all. Why not add to it for personal gain, instead of war’s? “We’ll find them,” the General had said, hugging her behind closed doors like a father. Fiore shuddered at the memory but couldn’t change her actions as they talked together. The tape playing back in her head was a curse, but a gift at the same time. From her dreams she had collected small tokens of information she knew she could use during her conscious hours. Then came the next part, something she now dreaded almost as much as the fire itself. Before the police could question them or even draw them into a conclusion, Fiore had two names. Boys that lived down the street, already a few minor records for speeding and causing trouble. She had seen them many times, playing with a basketball, revving daddy’s expensive sports car, trying to play up the life of an adult when they were only sixteen. Neighbors. The disgust drove her wild. And the call for vengeance became crystal clear. It was broad daylight when she kicked the front door down. Someone yelped and seemed to be padding closer to inspect what had happened to cause the loud crash. Fiore moved with graceful silence, for once moving like the soldier she was on her home soil. Swiftly, out of view, she caught sight of an older man in the reflection of his display cabinet. He cursed and inspected the door. Walking up behind him, she gave him a swift knife-hand blow, half an inch below the base of his skull, dropping him soundlessly. Someone else was calling. An adolescent. The first on her hit list. Dressed in a tight camisole and a mini-skirt that was more or less a strip of pleated fabric, Fiore looked like one of the teenage girls she had seen hanging around the house more often than not. Her bright blonde hair was in a ponytail, her feet encased in four-inch wedges that lifted her height even higher and accentuated the almost anorexic legs. “Danielle!” he sounded excited. What teenage boy wouldn’t be? Fiore turned with an impish smile. His face fell as he spotted the door, and his father collapsed beneath it. “What the fuck happened?” his mouth was as disgusting as the rest of him. Fiore stared long and hard as she walked towards him, and even in those few seconds, there was a faint recognition; he knew something wasn’t right. A secondary knife-hand strike shot out, directly into his throat. She didn’t distinctly hear his trachea break, but the effects became visible. Folding her arms as the boy dropped to the ground, clutching his throat, she tilted her head. “If you know how to perform a trichotomy, now would be the time.” His eyes bulged. Like a fish out of water, his movements became strange and strained. It wasn’t even a minute before he fell unconscious after a few failed attempts at getting up. She kicked him hard when he tried to grab her leg, felt the savage pleasure it brought. She wasn’t going to stand there and talk to him, gloat or give him any long-winded speech. The patience for that had left her. Only an animalistic side remained that took instinctive pleasure in the suffering she was now inflicting, like a fire fed by gasoline that roared higher. In her conscious state, she could only wish she had spent more time finding out the truth before taking it out on the innocent. Craig she hadn’t spared in the least. His diesel-soaked suicide in his brand new Hummer 6 had been splattered all over tabloids and newspapers. Many attributed it to the murder of his best friend in a home invasion where thousands of dollars worth of goods had been stolen…
The scientific way of reprogramming her brain meant that her sleep patterns were not deep. The logic was kept alive enough to process and relive events in almost real-time, with one-hundred percent efficacy and lucidity. A secondary way of making sure nothing was lost. During it, the chip inserted in her pineal gland would replay how efficient the guise was as well. Any slips were brought to the surface, logged and downloaded later at the USSOCOM base. Fiore could sleep, but not. It wasn’t the escape that nearly everyone else could enjoy. Drugs did not stop it, nor was she able to turn it off. The chip overrode her gland’s natural melatonin production, disrupting any normality her resting pattern may have once had. As a nano-implant, it was the one constantly functional piece of machinery she no longer had control over. Secondary implants located in other anatomically difficult places had already been destroyed or altered, most by the HEMP. The electromagnetic pulse device had been set off behind enemy lines by the enemy, at an altitude, which had knocked out nearly every mechanical device in her body in a single wave. It had affected no other agent. None had been nearby. The memory of that eye-opening day served her well. With a sigh, she opened her eyes slowly.
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