Fallen World: The Complete Trilogy

by Tom Jones

  Chapter 2

  The Hunt Begins

  The agent looked into the crosshair of his newly acquired Trijicon AccuPower, and he then looked past his rifle and at the target he was using to sight in the rifle with. Since he was using subsonic rounds for his Haenel Defence RS8 Subsonic, he had to take into account the speed of the round he was firing as well as the lighter load of gunpowder used in each of the rounds. For sighting his rifle, he decided to shoot at a target that he positioned to be just about one hundred meters away from his position. Though he was not sure at what distance he would engage Arcades at, he wanted to stay as far away from the fox as possible to make sure that the fox would not hear the suppressed gunshot. The human held his breath as he tried to steady his rifle. Even though the RS8 was fitted with a Warne Skyline bipod attached to the rifle’s bottom Picatinny rail, the agent still wanted to make sure that his barrel was as still as possible. The agent disabled the rifle’s safety, and he took his shot once he was ready.

  The gunshot was quiet enough that the agent did not need to wear any sort of hearing protection. Thanks to the integral suppressor combined with the subsonic .308 load, the rifle sounded more like an air rifle would. After taking the shot, the agent scooted over to his left in order to look down a pair of binoculars he had set up on a tripod to view the target. He could see that he had landed a shot directly above the bullseye. The agent scooted back over to the rifle without getting up from his prone position, and he adjusted his sight accordingly. After the agent finished adjusting his sight, he cycled the rifle’s action to eject the spent casing as well as to chamber a new round. The spent casing landed in a plastic bin the agent had placed next to him that would collect all of the spent rounds. He did not really want anybody to figure out that he was shooting in the middle of the woods, especially since he was indeed planning something that would not be legal.

  After the agent deemed that his rifle was ready to fire again, he looked down the scope and lined up the crosshair for a second shot. This time, the human took less time lining up his shot, and he fired after holding his breath for a few seconds. After looking through the binoculars to his immediate left again, his shot now landed a few inches beneath the bullseye. The human shook his head in mild frustration, and he chambered another round into his rifle. The RS8’s magazine held ten rounds, so the agent felt that he would be able to sight in his rifle for shooting a target at one hundred meters by using one magazine worth of rounds. The agent did not want to have to use more rounds than it was worth to sight his rifle’s scope. Since the rifle was not shooting to the left or right of the target, all the human had to do was just make sure that he scope was able to reliably hit a target at a distance of one hundred meters. After adjusting the scope for elevation yet again, the agent looked through his sight again and held his breath. Steadily keeping his crosshair over the bullseye, the human took another shot.

  A view through the binoculars confirmed that the rifle was now shooting above the bullseye yet again. The agent let out a slight grunt as he chambered the fourth round into his rifle, and he heard the sound of the empty shell casing landing into his plastic bucket. The human knew that the AccuPower was adjustable for windage, but it seemed as if he did not need to adjust the setting. Though it was not windy at all, the human did not feel that wind would cause enough trouble to significantly throw off his shot at the distance he was looking at zeroing in the weapon at. He was planning for the rifle to hold zero at one hundred meters, and he would adjust accordingly if he was faced with shooting Arcades at a different distance. Thankfully, the AccuPower seemed to be sighted in correctly to shoot straight, but he still needed to properly adjust the weapon’s elevation to hit the bullseye. The human turned the dial for the elevation down slightly, for he did not want to fire beneath the target again. After the agent was ready, he returned back to the rifle in order to take his fourth shot.

  The agent firmly placed the stock of the RS8 against his right shoulder as he steadied himself. Lying prone as he was, he was able to hold the rifle in the most stable position, and the bipod was only helping with stability. The human even had a few sandbags which he placed around the sides of the rifle in order to make sure that the rifle would be evenly balanced and not shift around due to small movements. The agent lined his crosshair up directly with the bullseye of the target again, and he held his breath as he prepared to take his shot. The human felt no wind, and he also felt nothing moving the barrel of his rifle, even if it was slight. After he was satisfied with where he was pointing his barrel, the agent slowly pulled the trigger and heard the rifle fire. The human pulled the bolt back, but he did not push it forward to chamber a new round. Feeling very confident that he scored a successful bullseye, the agent scooted back over to the binoculars once again. After viewing his handiwork, the human grinned slightly as he saw that he scored a direct hit on the bullseye he was aiming for.

  Returning to the rifle, the agent looked at the four shell casings in his plastic bin, and he knew that he still had six more rounds left in the magazine. Confident enough that he was properly shooting on target, the agent removed the magazine from his rifle, returned the bolt to battery, and engaged the rifle’s safety. The human stood up from his prone position, and he walked over to the target he had stapled to a tree. After walking for one hundred meters, the agent retrieved the target, and he did his best to remove the torn paper as well as the staples themselves. After collecting all of the target’s remains that he was able to, the agent folded up the target and walked one hundred meters back to his shooting area. Though he did leave his equipment unattended, the agent felt that he was isolated enough that nobody should bother him. He had parked his car about a quarter of a mile from where he was shooting, and he had already traveled to a remote location to shoot in the first place.

  The agent boxed up his rifle, placed all of his trash into the plastic bin, and he began to walk off while carrying his belongings. The agent had brought a range bag with him, and he placed his spare ammunition along with some hex keys and assorted tools for adjusting a rifle and rifle accessories. The range bag was rather heavy due to the few sandbags the agent had brought with him as well as the spotter’s binoculars he used for sighting, but the combined weight of his belongings was by no means a situation he was unable to handle. In the agent’s left hand was the RS8 Subsonic that he had in the case, so the agent was carrying a decent amount of weight in total. The agent planned his trip in such a way that he would drive a few miles in a different direction before disposing of his spent shell casings and target. He planned to deposit each of the four casings in different locations to ensure that he would not possibly have any of his actions traced back to him. The agent still took these precautions even though he knew that the Illuminati would easily get him out of any legal trouble he might find himself in for shooting Arcades. The human thought to himself that he technically would not even need the Illuminati to bail him out. After all, why would anybody ever trust a fox over a human? The agent smirked to himself as he thought about the hypothetical scenario in his head.

  After walking for a quarter of a mile, the agent finally returned to his 2019 Ford Taurus, and he placed his equipment into the rear seat of his vehicle. Before the agent moved to the driver’s seat of the sedan, he opened the range bag again to retrieve the four spent shell casings. The agent was wearing a pair of Mechanix Covert Tactical Gloves the entire time, so he was not concerned with any fingerprints on the cases. The human deposited the casings into one of the cupholders near the center console of his vehicle, and he looked around one last time to make sure that he was not being watched himself. The agent stood in silence as he listened very carefully to see if he was able to hear anything he would find suspicious. All the agent was able to hear was the occasional sounds coming from feral animals from within the woods, and luckily for the agent, anthros and ferals were two different types of entities entirely. There were no sapient beings within the foreseeable vicinity which the agent occupied.
With his surroundings looking completely clear, the agent closed the driver side door, and he departed from the area.

  The agent took the scenic route on his way back to his temporary housing provided to him by the Majestic 12, and he made sure to dump one casing out at a time as he drove back to his safehouse. Whenever he threw a casing out the window, he made sure that there were no vehicles around as well as no foot traffic that might witness him. Over the course of about twenty minutes, the agent was successfully able to throw all four shell casings in different locations. He was also able to leave his target in a random dumpster he stopped at after he tore the paper target up into many unrecognizable pieces. Fortunately for the agent, nobody was around to see him dispose of any of his evidence, despite the fact that the agent technically had not done anything illegal as of yet. The Majestic 12 always emphasized secrecy, and the agent did not want to become complacent and potentially blow his cover. After all, the Majestic 12 was not even supposed to exist, and the Illuminati as a whole was not supposed to exist either.

  After another twenty minutes passed, the agent finally arrived at his safehouse, and he made sure to unload all of his equipment out of his vehicle for the time being. The agent would need to sort out his equipment and bring only what he truly needed for the mission; he did not want to bring any unnecessary items that would ultimately weigh him down. The agent knew that he would have to keep the rifle, but he would not be using traditional ammunition to shoot Arcades with. After all, the agent was specifically tasked with bringing the fox alive to personally answer to the Illuminati. The Majestic 12 agreed that Arcades was too dangerous to their organization since the fox knew a considerable amount of information about the various facilities of the Omega Foundation. In fact, Arcades still possessed property of the Foundation such as the XMP-1 he casually displayed on the wall in his store.

  The agent may not have been tasked with retrieving the XMP-1 from Arcades’ possession, he was ultimately tasked with capturing the fox alive. The Majestic 12 had given the human a decent briefing in regard to the fox’s previous endeavors, and the organization advised the human to not try and capture the fox up close. Even though Arcades was nearing the category of being chronically underweight, the Majestic 12 advised the agent that the fox could still be dangerous to face up close. After all, the fox had beaten an anthro aligned with the Foundation unconscious at one of their black sites which Arcades had successfully infiltrated. Besides, the human did not know if the fox carried any weapons on him, and he was not looking to take his chances since the fox did operate a business dealing predominately with the sale of firearms. The human opened the polymer case which held his RS8, and he began to remove one of the rounds from the weapon’s magazine which he had not fired. The human felt confident that he would be able to fire upon the fox from a distance using a special dart round that he had made.

  After removing one of the live .308 rounds from the magazine he had used to sight in the rifle with, the agent took one of the rounds which he had already made, and he examined it. The round was indeed a 7.62x51mm round, but the bullet itself was actually a bespoke round which was more akin to a dart. The dart itself was loaded with a tranquilizing solution that was mixed with the fox’s height and weight specifically in mind. Inside of the custom dart, the human had a proper dosage that would render the fox unconscious for a bit longer than an hour and a half provided that he hit the fox effectively. The human had to be weary, however. The dart still had a chance to not render the fox unconscious if Arcades was shot in a bad position, and shooting the fox again had the potential to kill him due to an overdose. The Foundation had developed the tranquilizing solution to ensure compliance for unruly anthros who decided to resist, but the Foundation had plenty of other solutions ready to achieve the same goal outside of the realm of pharmaceuticals. Since the agent had already removed one of the .308 rounds which he had not fired, he loaded the tranquilizer darts into the rifle’s magazine. The human only had five dart rounds which he produced, and the RS8’s magazine only had a capacity of ten rounds in total. Though the agent doubted that he would need the five tranquilizer rounds, he still took them with him anyways just in case he were to miss a shot or two. The agent doubted that he would miss his shot. After all, the rifle was shooting offset in the vertical direction; it was shooting straight in the horizontal direction. The five live rounds beneath the darts were present primarily for the event of a worst-case scenario.

  After the agent had his magazine filled with his ten rounds, he inserted the magazine into the rifle, and he disabled the rifle’s safety before chambering a round. Once a round was chambered and the rifle was ready to fire, the agent engaged the safety on the rifle again and placed it back into the case. The human separated the boxed rifle from his other equipment, and he began to unload everything from out of his range bag. He would not be needing anything which he took with him to the impromptu range he had visited earlier in the day. Instead, the agent went into another room before returning with a set of equipment he would need after he rendered the fox unconscious. Since the tranquilizing agent would only be effective for an hour and a half at the best, the agent knew that he would have to keep the fox subdued to take him to the Illuminati.

  The agent unzipped one small bag, and inside was a set of restraints made by the company Armament Services and Procedures. At the turn of the last decade, ASP had released a new product into the military and police market: the ASP Transport Kit. The kit included a pair of rigid handcuffs made by ASP, a set of ASP leg irons, and even a waist chain that included enough chain to connect a detainee’s waist to his or her ankles. The agent was briefed that the fox had been able to escape restraints before, so he wanted to be sure that he would be able to detain the fox with no issues. The agent even had with him a pair of thumbcuffs produced in Taiwan, and he felt confident that the thumbcuffs combined with the ASP Transport Kit should be enough to secure the fox for the time being. Though the included waist chain in the transport kit featured locks that would prevent one from undoing the chain once applied, the human went a step further by having all of the locksets in the ASP rigid handcuffs and leg irons swapped with the ‘high-security’ locksets made by the same company. The installed locksets could only be opened with a double-bitted key, and they also featured two pawls to prevent somebody from shimming the restraints open.

  The human made sure that he still had the ASP Transport Kit complete in its entirety before zipping the carrying case back up and placing it into the larger range bag. While the agent would be able to physically restrain the fox, he still needed to be able to silence him as well as prevent him from biting. The agent had procured a fox muzzle just for the occasion he was planning on. The fox muzzle in its design was very similar to the muzzle that policemen carry to prevent canoid anthros from biting, but the muzzle which the agent had was designed with foxes specifically in mind. The main difference is that the fox muzzle was more narrow in its shape, and that design choice was made specifically in order to absolutely ensure the best tight fit over a fox’s mouth. Though the muzzle did have a central strap in the middle of it that one could loosen to allow speech, the human was planning on tightening the strap to prevent Arcades from speaking whatsoever. The human deposited the muzzle into the bag, and he felt that he had everything he essentially needed to subdue the fox. The agent was tasked with bringing Arcades in, and he was not planning on letting the fox escape. He was ready for the hunt.

  The fox placed a magazine into his Laugo Arms Alien, and he aimed at a paper target sitting about ten meters in front of him. After racking the slide to chamber a round, the fox aimed down the default sights of the handgun, and he fired three rounds in rapid succession at the target. Since the Alien had a safe action trigger much to the likes of a Glock, the fox did not have to worry about disengaging a manually activated safety. After shooting three rounds at the target, the fox lowered his handgun in order to check his accuracy. The fox moved his finger out of the trigger guard, and he point
ed the weapon both down range and towards the ground as he visually examined the target. Arcades had successfully hit the target three times, but his shots were about seven inches apart from one another in terms of grouping. Arcades raised the handgun again, and he fired the remaining seven rounds which he had in the magazine. Though the handgun could hold more than ten rounds in its default magazine, Arcades did not feel a need to load more rounds into the magazine. When the fox depleted all of the rounds in the magazine, the unique slide locked back, and Arcades dropped the magazine to see that his weapon was out of ammunition.

  Without inserting the magazine back into the handgun, the fox released the slide, held the weapon in a safe direction, and pulled the trigger to drop the hammer before inserting the empty magazine back into the handgun. With the weapon now clear and safe, the fox placed it gently back on the table in front of him before he removed his hearing protection and placed the electronic earplugs into one of his shorts’ pockets. Arcades was still wearing his Oakley Radar sunglasses, and he did not intend to remove his shades at the moment. Just as the fox prepared to return inside his building to retrieve a different weapon, he saw Jason come outside to meet him. Arcades did walk up to meet the wolf halfway during his walk, “Hey Jason.” The wolf replied to the fox, “How’s it goin’ out here?” The fox held up his empty handgun while keeping the barrel pointed away from the wolf, “Trying out this handgun.” The wolf looked at the Laugo Arms Alien, but he did not recognize the unusual pistol, “What is that? Is that another Glock you have?” The fox held out the handgun and offered it to the wolf, “Close. It’s the Laugo Arms Alien made in the Czech Republic. It’s very expensive compared to a regular Glock, and it’s even more expensive than my Salient Arms G17.” The wolf did not know exactly how expensive the fox was trying to imply, “Oh really? How much did this cost?” Arcades replied, “That goes for about $5,000.” Jason’s eyes lit up, “Blimey! You just handed it to me like it’s just any other gun, too.”