0650 hours, 11 December 2050, Red Zone R-7Lieutenant James Bell advanced slowly through the ruins of Denton, Texas. The devastated town had once housed over 100,000 people at the start of the century, but years Tiberium infestation and incessant warfare had turned it into an uninhabitable ghost town. The very ground was desolate, ruined and corrupted by the alien crystals. He wore a special breath mask and cloth hood over his face to protect him from inhaling Tiberium-laced dust that could settle in your lungs and start eating away at your alveoli. Bell disliked the hoods and the long protective jackets they were wearing, but when operating in Red Zones, there was no other choice unless you felt like losing a decade or two off your life expectancy on a stroll down the street.
Bell made his way stealthily down a ruined street that had once housed a tranquil suburb populated by families. Now the crumbling houses were shells of their former selves, surrounded by mutating trees and collapsed, rusting power lines and cell phone towers. Fires and ion storms, combined with the predations of numerous civil struggles and, of course, Tiberium, had turned this section of small-town America into something more akin to Tolkien’s Mordor.
“One does not simply walk into Mordor,” he mumbled to himself, remembering the line from the classic movie that had been showing at the barracks theater last weekend.
The dialogue seemed appropriate for this particular locale as well—barren and desolate. Ordinarily, his partner, Mark Laramie, would have been alongside him, serving as his protector and his spotter, but Laramie had been shot in the chest by the Nod Shadow Teams that had breached earlier. When Bell had learned of a search-and-destroy mission to find the Nod forces that had attacked Onyx base, he had immediately volunteered, over the protestations of his superiors, who had wanted him to wait for a new spotter to be assigned to him. He had volunteered anyway.
So now here he was, securing the flank of a sizable ZOCOM clearing force that including everything from battle-hardened infantry to growling Pitbulls and lumbering Mammoth Tanks that were rolling through Denton in hopes of finding a hidden Nod base and then pulverizing it. Bell had lost too many friends to Nod predations to miss out on an opportunity to fight back.
As a GDI sniper, his role would be pivotal. His scout training allowed him to flit from shadow to shadow unseen by all but the most alert enemies, while his own gear and eyes were well-suited for picking out hostile targets. A very useful skill when dealing with a stealth-happy enemy like Nod. Of course, Bell normally preferred to do so with Laramie, or any of his three previous spotters by his side. Having the back-up was helpful, he admitted.
The sight of a moving shadow two streets ahead caught his eye and Bell felt his pulse quicken. A self-confessed adrenaline junkie, he nevertheless slowed his advance, sighting down the scope of his GLS-70 sniper rifle. There was something out there, he was sure of that.
“Bell to Command, I’ve got motion, about 500 meters away.”
“Copy that—,” came the transmission, only to be immediately broken into hissing static.
Bell had seen enough action to know what that meant and dove for cover. Nod didn’t just jam your comms and radar to show that they could. They only fired off that particular weapon when they were about to get serious.
Sure enough, the skies exploded with the sound of whistling artillery shells and bombs. Bell looked up and saw a flight of batwing Vertigo bombers wheeling to deliver their high-explosive bombs on the GDI advance while the ruined streets of Denton lit up with gunfire. Streams of bright tracers illuminated the rooftops while the crump sound of grenades and heavier cannon shells rattled the nearby crumbling masonry. Nod apparently had hidden quite a force here and Bell cursed the necessity of scouting and clearing in this manner as opposed to a simple sensor sweep or aerial patrol.
He was emotionless now, totally focused on his job, and woe to any Nod soldier who ended up in his crosshairs. All his normal mannerisms and humanity were swept away, replaced with the grim mask of a sniper at war. He would shoot, and he would kill, and then he would do it again.
Raising his rifle, he immediately swept the surrounding streets for signs of enemies. The tell-tale smoke trail of a rocket launch caught his eye and he spotted a pair of Nod militants lying down on an ancient rooftop, hastily reloading their weapons for another shot at the advancing GDI armor. Bell lined them up in his thermal sight, planted his crosshairs squarely on the first man, and squeezed the trigger.
The resulting round hit the man square in the chest as he knelt to fire, pitching him backward and nearly throwing him off the roof. The sniper’s bullet had torn an unsightly hole through the militant’s chest cavity, killing him instantly. His partner turned to look and Bell could tell he was aghast from his body language as he slid another round into the chamber of his sniper rifle. A second later, and the other rocket-bearing militant was a lifeless corpse bleeding out on a rooftop that had to be older than Methuselah.
Satisfied, Bell made one more cursory scan of his surroundings, then pressed on towards the sound of battle. He would be needed.
He had advanced about a quarter of a mile, still without any communications with his superiors, when he saw a group of GDI riflemen blazing away at a sizable group of Nod militants hunkered down behind the smashed hulks of cars, reinforced with sandbag barriers. Bell took two of the militants down with snap shots, then raced up a rickety fire escape ladder of a two-story office building to get an elevated position. With the soldiers down below covering him, he would be quite safe and free to pick off the militants one by one.
For the next three minutes, his rifle reigned over that corner of the battlefield, sending soldier after poorly-equipped and trained Nod soldier to the ground with messy holes through their bodies. Yet, despite his success, the militants stubbornly refused to abandon their positions, fighting in utter futility. That alone triggered a warning in Bell’s mind, but his sniper’s duty demanded that his focus be kept on doing what he did best—killing the enemy. Suddenly, a brilliant lance of laser light shot out through the smoky gloom of the embattled town, dropping one of the GDI riflemen below. Bell fired back at the source of the laser by reflex, but doubted that he had hit anything.
He knew what that thin beam of lethal laser meant, though. Somewhere out there was a Nod commando, a highly-trained female assassin that only he could spot and only he could effectively kill. Bell earnestly wished Laramie were here; the spotter had a keen eye and a second sight when it came to Nod traps. He also fervently wished he could communicate with the riflemen in means other than shouted instructions and hand signals, but Nod was still jamming their radios.
The laser beam shot out again, nailing another hapless rifleman through the visor. The dead man flew back and hit the ground, twitching. This time, Bell caught a glimpse of the shadowy female silhouette and fired, narrowly missing. He lined up to fire again when a cloud of green mist exploded in front of his position. He tried to hold his breath, but some of the vapor seeped through. Bell could feel the drugs running through his system, but was powerless to stop them from scrambling his mind.
Nod soldier after Nod soldier appeared to be charging him and Bell frantically fired round after round into each one. The normally steady sniper flinched at the hail of gunfire directed his way, even as some part of his detached mind noted that the gunshots sounded more like GDI rifles and that the elusive laser beams were still darting out to find marks among the GDI riflemen.
When his vision cleared, Bell saw that the skirmish had died down, simply because there were no GDI riflemen left. He hoped that they had gotten the commando, that he had helped pick her off, but suspected otherwise. A horrifying feeling welled up in him as he realized that his wild firing spree might have caught some of his own soldiers in the crossfire. He brought his rifle up to fire again when he heard the crunch of a boot behind him.
Bell wheeled, his hand diving for the sidearm in its belt holster, only to be confronted with the muzzle of a multi-barreled machine gun held by an intimidating Nod Confessor in full battle array. Standing beside the Confessor with a bored look on her face was the Nod commando, one laser pistol held idly by her side.
“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,” the Confessor warned him. “Not if you want to live.”
The trapped sniper glared at them, his hand clenched around the grip of his pistol, but they had him trapped and his fury was utterly impotent.
“Is he the one, Sister?” the Confessor asked.
She nodded and the Confessor swung the barrel of his machine gun with surprising force. It caught Bell on the side of the head, rendering him unconscious.
