Ctingg... creakk... shiuuu, creakk... creakk.
"No... it's not working."
Edgar lowered the weapon, staring at the distant, mocking steel silhouette through the hazy smoke of the firing lane. He had been practicing for an hour and a half. His feet were sore from walking back and forth to the ammunition desk just to refill his lone magazine, but the results were catastrophic. The more he shot, the wider his bullets strayed. Every trigger pull felt progressively worse than the last.
He paused, setting the Glock 17 down on the wooden shooting bench with a hollow thud. When he lifted his hands, he realized his fingers were trembling violently. The heavy, unyielding vibration of the consecutive recoil had completely blown out his muscle control. No wonder his consecutive shots were flying into the walls; his nerves were misfiring.
He needed a reset.
Leaving his lane, Edgar walked out of the concrete training complex and stepped into the cool, open air of the courtyard. He reached into his tactical leg pouch, pulled out his pack of cigarettes, and tapped one loose.
Clink... Whoosh.
He sparked his vintage lighter, the small flame dancing in the afternoon breeze. Taking a deep, burning drag, Edgar held the smoke in his lungs for a long moment before letting out a slow, heavy exhale. This was the anchor. As the rush of nicotine hit his bloodstream, it felt as if his hyper-stimulated brain was violently squirming, forcing his tense muscles to artificially relax. No matter how many times he smoked, that cold, chemical wave of relief always felt exactly the same.
As he stood there, watching the gray clouds disintegrate into the air, a shadow fell over him.
"Hey, friend. Mind sharing one?"
Edgar's gaze drifted toward the newcomer. It wasn't a luxury item, and he had no real reason to hide it. Reaching down, he flicked the pack upward so a single cigarette slid out on its own, offering the box with a silent gesture.
As a smoker, there was an unwritten, universal law: you never let another man's bare fingers touch the base of the cigarette you were about to put between your own lips. It wasn't a formal protocol dictated by the dome; it was a basic, instinctual courtesy shared among survivors on the street. A random bit of criminal conscience.
"Thanks," the man said, pulling the cigarette free and igniting it with his own lighter. Edgar noted the tool with a trace of professional cynicism. 'A guy who carries a lighter but no cigarettes... the ultimate taboo.' On the streets, a parasite who hunted for free loose sticks without bringing his own pack was a creature so universally detested you didn't even want to look at his face.
"The name's Epi. Nice to meet you."
"Edgar," he replied flatly, his eyes returning to his own exhaled smoke. The guy had just taxed his precious inventory; there was absolutely no way Edgar was going to give him a warm, friendly smile.
"I've been watching you in the lanes for over an hour," Epi said, leaning against the concrete wall and staring straight ahead, mimicking Edgar's posture. "You look desperate to force that accuracy up. Just a warning—in the long run, pulling the trigger with that kind of frantic tension will ruin your body."
"It's my first time holding a firearm," Edgar admitted, the pressure of the coming night slipping into his voice. "And I've been thrown straight into a high-fatality mission at midnight. My teammate told me if I don't build the basic muscle memory right now, I'm a corpse. Any actual advice?"
Epi took a slow drag. "Hmm. Let's see. That setup sounds wildly different from the standard corporate training protocols. But then again, who am I to give random counsel? I'm not even a seasoned hunter inside this sector. Tell me, do your hands happen to be shaking without stopping?"
"Yeah. Even right now." Edgar switched his cigarette to his left hand and held up his right. The tremor was heavy and erratic—a visible, uncoordinated twitching of the tendons.
"Ah, the classic beginner's trap," Epi muttered, pointing his smoldering cigarette at Edgar's wrist. "Rapid firing without a cooling period. Your nervous system is trying to forcefully adjust to the constant, concussive kickback of the slide. The downside? You lose the steady skeletal structure required for precision. You're fighting your own nerves."
"That's logical," Edgar muttered, his analytical mind tracking the explanation. "So how do I bypass it? If my accuracy is still trash by 10:00 p.m., I'm dead."
"The solution to your limitation is fundamentally simple. There are multiple ways to cheat the recoil, but my old instructor gave me a specific rule: fire exactly ten shots, then force yourself to sit still and rest for a few minutes before touching the trigger again. Don't let your hand take the continuous toll of the kickback. Wait until the tremor stabilizes completely, then reset."
"That's decent advice. I'll put it to use—"
"But," Epi interrupted sharply, a wide, predatory grin breaking across his face, "since you paid the tax with a premium cigarette, I have an alternative method. One that perfectly exploits a shaking hand."
Edgar eyed the man's expression. If he hadn't already been smoking, that massive grin would have made his own cravings spike out of sheer psychological suggestion. 'How does this guy think his stinky mouth is worth my inventory?' Edgar thought. "Alright. Let's hear it." Even if it was useless street garbage, getting something in return for his asset was better than nothing.
"Hoho. Simple. Execute a double-tap. Fire twice, then immediately break your stance and rest. But ensure those two consecutive rounds hit the exact same target plane. Remember—just two shots, absolutely no more. Let the hand rest between cycles, and watch the magic happen. That's it. Hope it keeps you breathing."
With that, Epi took one final, massive puff, crushed the glowing ember against his heel, and casually tossed the filter into a nearby waste bin before walking back inside.
Edgar took two final drags, letting the heat burn right down to the filter. He put out the ember and threw the waste into the exact same bin. 'A double-tap... might as well try. Nothing left to lose.'
Walking back into the loud, sulfur-heavy air of the firing range, he found his Glock exactly where he had left it. He hadn't expected anyone to steal it under the eyes of the corporate armorers, but his street-honed survival instincts were hard to turn off. Back in the slums, leaving a lethal weapon out in the open like this was a death sentence.
Visualizing Nina's rigid combat posture in his mind, Edgar locked his feet into the floorboards. He gripped the Glock's textured frame with his right hand, supporting the base of the magazine with his left. He drew in a massive, deliberate breath, aligned the front iron sight right with the center of the bleeding bullseye, and let his Wavelength Detection focus entirely on the physical vibration of his own arms.
Ctingg... ctingg... creakk... ctingg... shiuu. Shiuu... shiu... creakk... creakk... shiuu.
"Fuck!" Edgar growled, lowering the gun again. It didn't work. Even when resting between sets of ten as Epi suggested, the rapid consecutive shots still caused his aim to drift wildly. The tremor lingered, corrupting the trajectory of every bullet that followed the initial spark. 'How the hell am I supposed to fix this?'
Frustrated, he marched back to the ammunition desk, refilled his magazine to full capacity, and returned to his lane.
This time, he decided to completely stop. He sat down, waiting for his pulse to settle. He looked out at his target—the steel silhouette was heavily dented and scarred by hundreds of impacts, but the wooden backing board behind it was absolutely shredded. Splinters of ancient wood lay piled on the concrete floor, mixed with the deformed lead of his missed rounds.
Once the physical shaking in his hands finally subsided to absolute zero, he picked up the Glock for what felt like the thousandth time. He struck the stance, locked his wrists, and decided to try the parasite's specific formula.
Two shots. Nothing more.
Ctingg... cting...
Edgar froze. He blinked, staring at the monitor display. It was hard to believe. The metal silhouette had chimed twice in rapid succession. The two impacts were grouped tightly right inside the inner ring.
Unwilling to trust it to mere luck, he adjusted his stance, centered his breathing, and pulled the trigger in another sharp, rhythmic burst.
Cting... cting...
"No way..." Edgar whispered, a cold chill of excitement running up his spine.
He had hit it consecutively. By restricting his operational output to exactly two bullets before breaking his stance, his accuracy hadn't just improved—it had spiked to nearly one hundred percent. The limitation was obvious: in a prolonged, chaotic firefight against multiple targets, a two-shot limit could be fatal. But for a raw recruit who had never held a firearm until four hours ago? This was a massive, god-tier cheat code.
If he found himself backed into a tight corner with a killer tonight, these two highly precise rounds would be the exact difference between life and death. 'And don't forget the head,' he reminded himself, his eyes hardening. 'If those two shots don't find the skull, the compliance rate drops to zero.'
With a renewed, predatory focus, Edgar threw himself back into the rhythm. He practiced the double-tap method over and over. Even when a shot went slightly wide, it was only by a fraction of a centimeter. His misses were no longer scattered across the room; they could be counted on a single hand.
By the time the automated clock chimed, indicating he had only thirty minutes of range time left, Edgar's internal confidence had completely transformed. Within the narrow parameters of this two-shot technique, he had built a flawless, mechanical rhythm. For the past hour, not a single round had missed the silhouette.
'Hahaha! At least my survival percentage just skyrocketed.'
Setting the weapon down, Edgar leaned back against the barrier, letting his heavily fatigued arms rest completely as he waited for Nina to come pull him out of the staging ground.
With nothing left to do in the lane, Edgar left the echoing noise of the shooting range and walked back outside, looking for a quiet corner to light another cigarette.
Leaning against the exterior concrete wall, he watched the gray smoke trail into the cooling air. His mind began to drift, floating backward to the day he had first awakened his trait. He still vividly remembered the electric surge of excitement that had consumed him back then. A year after that milestone, while working as a wilderness guide, he had encountered his first anomaly—a bizarre, mutated creature lurking in the overgrown terrain with a thick snow as a cover. It had the thick, armored plate-skin of a rhinoceros, but instead of a blunt horn, a single, razor-sharp obsidian blade protruded from its snout. The beast's frame had mutated as well, shrinking down to the compact, muscular size of a wild boar.
Edgar hadn't known if it could even be classified as a rhino anymore, but its speed had been terrifying—a lightning-fast streak of muscle and horn. Because of that sudden nightmare, he had been forced to take a massive detour, camping blindly in the dense wilderness with his clients for two straight days just to avoid the creature's territory and keep them alive.
His thoughts continued to wander until he found himself tapping out a third cigarette. Just as the flame caught the wick, a chill colder than the night air struck his spine. He suddenly remembered an old street proverb: Reminiscing about your past out of nowhere is a dead man's luxury.
Wasn't a sudden nostalgia is the ultimate red flag for a soldier?
'Why the hell am I suddenly walking down memory lane?' Edgar thought, a bead of cold sweat rolling down his neck. 'Please, God—whoever or whatever you are up there—just keep me breathing tonight. Do that, and I swear I'll become a faithful follower of your teachings.'
Amused and disgusted by his own sudden piety, he shook his head. The taste of impending mortality left a bitter film in his mouth. Just as his fingers brushed the pack to draw a fourth stick—leaving him with only two left—the silhouette of Nina broke through the dim courtyard lighting.
"Hi, Ed. Move out," she called, her voice cutting through his anxiety. "We need to join the briefing before heading into the storm."
Edgar threw the cigarette butt into the bin and fell into step beside her. His tailored tuxedo trousers were now dusted with grey ash, and the heavy, acrid stench of cordite and sulfur hung to his skin like a shroud.
Nina glanced at him, her lips twitching as she tried to hold back a giggle while surveying him from head to toe. "Look at you, Ed. This morning you looked exactly like one of those puny young masters from a wealthy core family. Now, just based on the smell, someone would take you for a seasoned frontline soldier. Who would guess you only learned how to hold a firearm five hours ago?"
"How was the practice?" she asked, her tone turning practical. "I hope your accuracy hit the baseline."
"I found a rhythm," Edgar replied, his eyes scanning the dark paths ahead. "But I can't say it's an ideal style. I can only guarantee high accuracy if I limit myself to a double-tap. Anything beyond two consecutive shots, and I doubt the lead will even land on the same continent as the target. I'm just hoping the God of Luck takes my side tonight."
"Only two shots?" Nina repeated, frowning slightly. "Well, it can't be helped. At least you have absolute confidence backing those two rounds. It's better than panic-firing. Don't worry too much about the deployment; the Squad Leader will likely be lenient with you. She knows you're a complete novice. She isn't stupid enough to put a fresh recruit in the vanguard slot."
"I hope you're right," Edgar muttered.
As they walked toward the staging area, Nina began dropping small, invaluable survival tips—how to watch your blind spots when the ambient light fails, how to check for corporate crossfire, and how to stay behind the heavy combatants.
Just before the clock struck 10:00 p.m., they arrived at the designated meeting place. The lush, vibrant park from earlier had completely transformed under the cover of night. The towering oaks now cast massive, jagged shadows across the grass, turning the scenic comfort into a claustrophobic cage.
Edgar counted the shadows waiting under the canopy. The squad's numbers had grown. There were now seven personnel standing in the dark, including Squad Leader Prisma.
The moment Prisma noticed their arrival, she stepped forward. The ambient light caught her face—she hadn't blinked in hours, and her eyes were heavily bloodshot, burning with a menacing, unstable focus.
"Now that everyone is assembled," Prisma spoke, her voice low, raspy, and cutting through the quiet rustle of the leaves. "Our operation tonight has received official clearance from headquarters."
She scanned the semi-circle of soldiers, her predatory aura flexing just beneath her skin.
"Let's begin the mission briefing..."
At her command, every eye locked onto the center of the clearing. The air grew heavy, thick with the anticipation of violence. Edgar drew in one final, controlled breath, his hand resting instinctively against the cold frame of the Glock on his thigh.
He just hoped he would survive to see the morning.