The brochure for Mobile Task Force Epsilon-11 promises you the world. Operators in heavy black armor, breaching through smoke, holding the line against the most dangerous creatures the Foundation has to offer. The best of the best, the ones that "die in the dark so you may live in the light" or whatever the posters say.
God, I wanted it so much. I was ready to do everything for it.
But of course, I could only dream about joining. I washed out of the NTF selection program on week six. Not because I couldn't handle a weapon or that I couldn't run a 400 meter sprint in 50 seconds with my rifle, but because I was "too careful", apparently. During the final simulated containment breach exercise, I stopped the team to re-evaluate a corridor, which caused the instructor to lash out at me and call me a "cowardly piece of civilian garbage" and slap a red reassignment slip into my hand.
A transport came to pick me up a day later and I prepared for the worst, believing they would probably assign me to some security desk at a logistics depot. Instead, the transport took me to Site-17 and dropped me off at the Hydroponics Sector with a pamphlet that said "Go to Seminar Room 420. Be there by 0800."
I arrived at the room at exactly 0755. The door was standard-issue Foundation stainless steel, but the placard next to it didn’t list a department name, just a digital keypad and a small, green indicator light. I swiped my keycard and stepped inside.
I expected some kind of classroom. Desk chairs, a whiteboard and maybe a projector displaying a "Welcome to the Site-17 Security Department" message in a corporate font.
The place actually looked like a sterile white box under ceiling lights so bright they made my eyes water. The air smelled like a weird mix of an abandoned car wash and a vape shop, damp cement, soapy water, and a heavy, artificial fruit-and-pine smell that wouldn't clear out. For a second I thought about backing out, figuring I'd been assigned to the cleanup crew that mops up blood after the real task forces finish shooting up a room.
Six other men and women were already there, sitting in silence along a row of steel chairs. At the front of the room stood a man behind a podium, wearing a slightly too tight Hawaiian shirt paired with some blue jeans and the energy of a wet paper towel.
"Sit down." He gestured to an empty seat.
"I'm Captain Spencer," he said into the mic, his eyes scanning us.
"You are now attached to Mobile Task Force Kappa-710. I'm sure you've heard the rumors about this unit in the barracks of Area-14 or wherever else you've trained, but I'll go over that in a moment, so stay with me."
"They call us "The Green Machine", and I'd like everyone in this room to know that name was not our idea. But you're part of us now, whether you like it or not."
Spencer turned over to one of the cadets who raised his hand. "Yeah?"
"What if I don't want to be here?"
Spencer huffed, "Well. Maybe don't fail at training next time and you'll go to the unit you actually want."
I glanced sideways to make sure what I was hearing is real, and the guy next to me looked at me and frowned.
"Let me correct all your assumptions with actual facts right now. Over the last two fiscal quarters, Kappa-710 has maintained a zero-casualty rate and zero property damage across all AORs while all the other units you probably wanted to go to lose an average of one guy a month to friendly fire because everyone's too busy sprinting at the big scary monsters to check their corners properly."
"You know why we don't have that problem?"
He raised his hand and tapped on a remote, the wall behind him lighting up with a picture of a plant that looked, unmistakably, like weed.
"Because what we work with doesn't want to fight anyone. It wants everyone to chill out."
He clicked again, and a dense block of text filled the screen.
"While it is structurally identical to baseline cannabis, once processed, the anomalous compound crosses the blood-brain barrier about six times faster than any baseline analog. Amygdala activity drops off a cliff instantly, and fight-or-flight switches off."
"Forty-five seconds to full sedation," he continued. "Roughly twenty-two minutes of stable incapacitation, and then a recovery phase with a sharp metabolic spike, which is the part where you'd better already have a granola bar in your hand."
He clicked off the slide and gestured at a long steel counter where one of the ugliest matte-black launchers I had ever seen sat.
"This is the ADS-04," Spencer said, picking it up. "Aerosolized Delivery System. Each canister's loaded with a refined resin concentrate suspended in a pressurized carrier. On impact, a thermal element kicks on for about half a second, just long enough to flash-vaporize the payload without combusting it. You're pretty much deploying something closer to a vape cartridge the size of a fire extinguisher."
He set it down gently back on the steel counter.
"You will be shooting the ceiling, air-vents, anywhere but not at the target itself. Vapor rises and spreads through HVAC systems better than smoke does, and it doesn't settle into fabric or skin the way raw resin would, so you don't get secondary contamination off a subject's clothes after the fact. You are creating weather. The goal is a room so saturated the hostile subject's fight-or-flight response simply clocks out for the day."
The cadet with a coffee stain on his shirt raised a hand. "What if there's no working HVAC? Like an old wing, or we're just outdoors?"
"Then you're not creating weather, you're throwing a house party with no air conditioning." Spencer replied.
"What does that even… mean, sir?" The cadet's hand slowly fell downwards.
"Cloud stays low, spreads slower, and you'll need more canisters to cover the same ground. Outdoors is worse, wind does whatever it wants. That's why we brief site layout before every deployment instead of just showing up and spraying. Got it?"
"…Yeah, alright. I think so." The cadet nodded.
"Now, the actual important stuff. And I need everyone in here to actually listen."
"Nobody in this unit smokes, vapes, or touches the raw product under any circumstances. Not a puff, not a taste, not anything. Completely straight-edge. If you're compromised, you can't tell if the target's vitals are dropping because of the gas or because you also just ate a family-size bag of chips and fell asleep standing up. Every one of you gets a blood draw before every shift. Am I clear? Good."
"You'll also be tossing any cigarettes or vapes you've got on you into that waste bin over there once this is over."
He paused and exhaled loudly before crouching and picking up a box that was below the podium, unlocking it. Inside were granola bars, protein bars and wrapped store brownies stacked in neat rows.
"This is also your weapon. Recovery-phase subjects get uncooperative fast, so you do not wait for them to ask. You give them the snacks. You do not laugh. You do not comment on their eyes. You walk them calmly to transport like you're picking up your buddy from a party."
The guy seated near me raised his hand. "…What if the… target doesn't want the snacks?"
"Then you have deployed insufficient product," Spencer deadpanned. "And that's on you."
He put the box down and leaned into the podium. "Any more questions? 'Cause briefing is over."
I glanced over at the snack box and then at the launcher. It didn't seem like I had much of a choice, but all in all… this probably wasn't a bad idea.
"No questions," I said. "Where do I sign up?"
"Good," Spencer said, already turning toward the exit door. "Suit fitting's down the hall. Don't expect a hazmat suit, by the way. It's a windbreaker with a respirator clipped to the collar. Budget didn't clear for anything nicer."