Ryker Petrović

[Ryker]

Dayton, 2044

A pale, misty morning covered the Ohio landscape with dew. It blurred past Ryker as he jogged a back-wood, two-lane highway. Breath fogged in front of his face, small, rhythmic clouds. Athletic clothes hugged him tight with warmth, landwarrior glasses rimming the eyes otherwise roaming their surroundings. One side of the road was tree-lined. Enough cover to hide from random eyes buzzing helicopters overhead if necessary. America was behind the times, but even their army utilized thermal-imaging seekers. A man ducking through underbrush would blaze like the sun even in the thickest of night. Thermal fabric disarray would be necessary. Not that Ryker wore such for a simple scouting run. The others scoffed when he insisted on surveying the route to and from the nuclear plant with his own two eyes. Custody satellite images of the area flooded the safe-house interior like wallpaper, but no virtual reality could replace what a man sensed with his body.

For that was what he was doing. Ears absorbed the thicket of forest movements on one side. His own two feet pounded their steady rhythm. The draw of steady breath in and out. He was a man at the peak of strength, endurance and athleticism. A six mile jog round-trip was hardly tiring.

Opposite the road was a wide-open field if not for the high fence spiked with barbed-wire scrawling the top like vines. The grass beyond was shorn low. Not a bush, not even so much as tall weeds could hide the darting of a rabbit let alone a man. A similar perimeter of unobstructed land circled the entire nuclear power plant. Ryker was a fast sprinter when he wanted, but cutting across the plain would be a death sentence. An escape route only to use in a last resort.

From here he could glimpse the frosty surface of the cooling ponds. Those waters were unnaturally rectangular in shape. Likely toads and other wildlife enjoyed their banked edges, but they served one singular purpose. To cool the force of reactions churning within enormous cement towers looming beyond.

So Ryker ran his circuit, just a man keeping up with fitness. Land warriors disguised as regular sunglasses recorded everything for him to study later. In the meantime, he absorbed this world until it was a part of him.

He’d be back tomorrow.