Some mood text for a campaign I’d love to run one day. Cthulhutech-y enhanced humans -thingy.

The Slow Game

The dust has cleared. I approach the officer in charge.

“What just happened? Captain Adams? Sir?”

“We won. That’s what.”

“But that’s a dozen of our men down, two seriously injured!”

“Son, have you ever encountered a precog before? Dozen scratched soldiers is a small price to pay to catch something that can see possible futures.”

I look at the old guy. Seen him from afar before, but never actually spoke to him. Trimmed goatee, old army greatcoat, some high-tech mesh armor underneath. He’s probably in his 40s, but something in his eyes make him look much, much older. I clear my throat and reply as firmly as I can.

“No sir. I was just transferred from Winterhampton unit. Never been in combat with anything beyond clearance seven. Precogs are a bit above what they’re willing to tell me, sir. But we didn’t catch him. He ran and our men got injured by freak accidents.”

The man looks at me with a crooked, mischievous smile on his face.

“You do know how they work, right? The basics?”

“Well, I’ve heard the stories. They can see the consequences of their actions and choose the one route that brings them the best outcome. That’s why we can’t catch them. That’s the whole point.”

“I’ve caught nine. This one makes it an even ten.”

“So, are you a future-glimpser as well, or how on Earth do you do it? Takes one to know one?”

“Boy, do I look like a twitchy freak who spends his every moment considering the consequence of his every action. I’m a human just like you and me and him and him and … ok, honestly, I think she’s a clearance two with those legs of her, they just can’t be human. Damn. But, to answer your question. Human. No powers.”

“Then how?”

“The basic thing to remember with any clearance four or higher is that their anomalies cause them to be pretty fried in the brain department. The need to survive and stay alive, the paranoia, those things take over when they’re threatened. With a temporal-causality enhanced perspective, the freak can see the multitude of paths their actions cause. And go through them, one by one, until they find one that leads them to safety. Just like it did today. It knew it had to come here to pick up the ransom money, but it also knew it was a trap. It’s known for hours before it ever came here. The really powerful ones can see their actions’ consequences to up to two days into the future, but with a punk like this, and judging from the results, I’m thinking some seven to ten hours.”

“The results?”

“He came in knowing the flaw in our trap. He was in and out just the way I wanted. If he had been a more powerful precog who could have seen twelve hours or further into the future, he wouldn’t have come. Or would have taken a different corridor, even if it had meant going into actual battle with my men.”

“How so?”

“It was filled with nice little cloud of nanites. They’ll flood his body with sleep-inducing chemicals in twelve hours that’ll keep him under for good full day. And start sending a homing signal while he’s dreaming away. We’ll have a good 4 hour window of picking him up and locking him away for good. It’s a slow game that works so well against these buggers, even if it means a few sacrifices along the way. Of course, my men know nothing of how the plan works so that they just follow orders.”

I smile and return from the scenario in my mind to the present day.

So the thing is a double-trap.

Sometimes it pays to play it safe and secure. Take it nice and slow. Think out side the box. Considering to return back after the theft, disguising myself as a trooper and asking questions, was very much worth it. I’ll have to re-think my course of action.

—

It’s been two weeks since the ransom drop incident. Killed a man there. Thought it would be easier after running through the scenario in my head a few times. Wasn’t. Haven’t been able to sleep without pills since. Going to bed at a warehouse hideout. Checking the morning just in case.

Can’t see anything in my future. Just the feeling of being restrained and hearing some unfamiliar voice telling me that “Sometimes it’s worth waiting for a very long time before taking action. The longer we wait, the harder it becomes for you to form a link between what you did and what effects it causes. And the harder that becomes, the more unlikely it is that you can precog it. And that’s where I come in. I design the next level of the trap, the level that works even if Captain Adams’ plan fails. Now just relax and get ready to be transported back into a holding facility…”