“The implications of such a thing are far-reaching,” the scientist said. “Mainly because it means that the people who we send into this mission will be people who are going to be putting their lives on the line.”
“And as such, we do not have the time nor the resources to gather more pods and gather more people immediately,” the military man said. “The reality is, we don’t know what we’re up against. We need more data.”
“And that, General, is why we are here,” Sang said confidently. She leaned up in her chair and placed her arms on the table. “The fact is that with the existence of these foreign beings confirmed, we must do everything in our power to collect information on them.”
“Information is vital beyond all other things,” Neil echoed. O’Hara nodded.
“There’s a lot of questions we just don’t know the answer to yet,” Sang continued. “Who are these things; what do they want? Why would they choose to invade Earth in this manner? How will they purge everything?”
“These questions are troubling,” the scientist said. “Yet, we have also read your proposal, and fear that it’s entirely unattached from reality.”
“Why’s that?” O’Hara asked.
“Because of the aforementioned lethality,” the general replied. Van grimaced. He’d known it would be a longshot to convince the higher-ups to approve the plan. “We simply cannot afford to lose agents due to a video game error.”
“That’s why we’ve got these two,” Neil said, waving to Sang and Van. “They’ve both volunteered to be our undercover agents, still collecting as much data as possible.”
“The sheer extent of psychological damage that she must have experienced from making contact hasn’t been evaluated,” the man in the middle said. “And I doubt that inexperienced agents will little real-world work experience would have what it takes for this kind of investigation work.”
“Hey, I’ve been playing this damn game for ten years,” Van said, leaning up and putting his hands on the table, trying to imitate Sang. “I can tell you that, without me, there’s little chance for success. Sang’s alive because of my exploitation of the game system. We have access to serious knowledge because of my ability to lead and fight in this game.”
“That’s all well and good, Mr. Van,” said the scientist. “But you’re forgetting the fact that you have no idea what you are up against. It would be in everyone’s best interests to choose to focus on some other method of investigation. Draco is a company, right? We must be able to locate them on the ground somewhere?”
“No,” Sang said, shaking her head. “They’re operating the entire game from their remote servers. The game world is their office. You can search high and low, but you’ll never find their actual physical office.”
“Sang’s right about that so far,” the general said, turning to face the other two. “Intelligence attempts to collect data from Draco have failed miserably for the last five years, and I doubt they will succeed now. It may be that the only way to crack this case is to get inside the game again.”
“You’re forgetting the fact that we don’t know what’s happening inside of her head,” the scientist said, aggressively pointing at Sang. “For all we know, exposure to the alien force has caused her mind to fracture. She could be insane and we’d never know it.”
“Whatever’s in my head, I don’t think I’m going to understand it without that Dragon,” Sang whispered as she stared blankly at the table. “We’ve got to go back in there.”
“It’s too risky!” the scientist declared, slamming his fist on the table. “Your request is denied.”
“Since when do you get to speak for the rest of us?” the suited man asked as he sharply turned to rebuke the scientist. “The White House put all three of us on this taskforce. Your vote only counts for one.”
“And what would you have them do? Would you allow them to march back in there and trapeze around? What if, the very moment they log in, Draco is waiting for them? What if, as soon as they connect, Draco kills them?”
“They’re grown adults,” O’Hara growled. “They’re perfectly fine with taking that risk. At the end of the day, we need to have people back in that world. These two are fully in the loop and they’ve survived some tough encounters. They’re the right kind of people.”
“They’re going to be the dead kind of people!” the scientist shouted.
“Supposing we approved of your plan to send them back in undercover,” the general said. “How do you intend to implement that?”
“It’s simple,” Neil said as he unrolled a schematic of a building. Van could see dozens of placements for computers and medical stations.
“We take our current pods and rig them up. I’ve had some people look at them and we think we can amplify them somewhat. At the very least, we’re going to fix Sang’s pod and if we can’t do that, we’ll give it to Van.”
“Hey!” Van shouted. He quickly became quiet once O’Hara glared at him with a look that could have killed a small animal.
“Then we put them in a centralized location, somewhere safer than our crappy abandoned office. We get a full team of hackers there, no small-time operations anymore. You get me twelve people working around the clock as they monitor the situation, we’re going to be golden. We’ll throw a few other pods in there, too, begin some kind of evaluation program to see if we can find suitable assistants for our lead. You guys conduct your real world investigation at the same time, and we pipe information to you every single day. Nothing happens without the brass knowing what’s going on.”
“Hmmm,” the general said, quietly stroking his chin. “And should there be some sort of compromise? Should those supposedly friendly aliens turn out to be not so friendly? What then? Agent Sang is carrying a lot of information around in her head. If she turns out to be some kind of liability…”
“Relax, Sang is gonna be fine,” Neil said. “Look, we’ve got a concrete plan that will solve all of our problems at once. We can collect data, build up an intelligence network from the inside, and then, when the time is right, strike, toppling Draco.”
“You’re playing with fire,” the man in the middle said. “What if they catch wind of your scheme and decide to execute their plan to purge mankind early, hmm? What then?”
There was a heavy silence that fell across the room. Everyone nervously glanced at one another.
“There’s nothing we can do about it,” O’Hara said. “But that’s only if we give in to the idea that we can’t fight these things. When I joined this organization, I wasn’t super-interested in diplomacy, stealing plans, or doing covert work. I wanted to be part of a group that solved problems, likely with violence. Sir, these aliens are a big problem, but that’s okay because we have the solution. Our taskforce will do everything it takes to eliminate them. There might be blood spilt, but we’re going to make sure it’s far more of their blood lost than ours. We might lose these two people sitting here today, but if it will stop these aliens’ plans, then it’s worth it, and they agree. This is a new kind of war, and we intend to win it.”
“Damn straight!” Van said.
“She’s right,” Sang replied, standing up. “I’m going in, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. If I have to go buy some gloves and a console, I’ll do it. But there’s nothing you can do to prevent us from going back in. So you might as well give us what we need.”