Silent Whispers

The voice telling you who to kill and where they were more familiar to you than the people across the breakfast table. 

The problem was that you were on holiday leave. Your implanted squad link was supposed to be shut down. Your unhackable quantum-encrypted squad link that was supposed to be only accessible by your chain of command.

You hoped it wasn't unhackable. Or at least that you were going crazy. Either way, you should be contacting your SO to report the voice. And the targets.

The targets were second on the long list of things you would be scared by if your squad link or psychotic breakdown hadn't shut down your ability to feel fear.

But the voice had told you to keep uplink silence, and the implanted squad link did more than silently whisper orders inside your head - it made you do them before you considered whether you should. Handy for quickly hiding from an AI-inferred sniper, not so much for political assassinations.

Last night you had killed your first target. Only this morning you had begun to worry about the ethics of it.

Your family hadn't noticed anything so far. You prayed they wouldn't, not knowing if anybody was hearing, knowing that if they did and answered, it wouldn't be their voice the one you'd obey.