Outside the Wire

In 2036, a civil war has taken over Eastern  Europe. American troops have arrived in the   area to act as peacekeepers, especially in the  lawless frontier controlled by warlord Viktor,   whose face has been seen by only a few people.  Viktor’s power has been growing so fast that   the Pentagon has decided to use robotic soldiers  known as gumps. During the gumps’ first mission,   the team gets ambushed and soon the robots start  getting destroyed. The field soldiers try their   best to keep their defenses but they’re slowly  getting killed as well. At the base, Lieutenant   Harp is keeping an eye on the fight through the  drone he controls. Because he’s always been a   drone pilot, he’s never been in an actual warzone  and this whole deal is rather mundane to him.   Suddenly he notices an unidentified truck coming  towards the soldiers and reports it to Miller,   asking for permission to launch a missile to  destroy the vehicle since it may be a threat.   However Miller rejects the idea because some of  his men are still trapped. Displeased with this,   Harp asks his partner Bale to confirm the  airstrike with their captain, but he rejects   him as well. Harp still thinks the truck is too  dangerous, so he disobeys orders and decides to   launch the missile anyway, blowing up the vehicle  and killing a bunch of American soldiers that he   only sees as collateral damage. Sometime later,  Harp is brought to court-martial, where he defends   his decision because he killed two men and a bunch  of robots but saved Miller and thirty-eight other   soldiers. The higher-ups decide that Harp needs to  learn what a real warzone and death are like and   send him to Camp Nathaniel, the American military  base in Ukraine. When he arrives at the camp, Herp   notices there are gumps everywhere, including some  shaped like dogs. Then he meets Colonel Eckhart,   who reminds him that if he survives the  mission, he’ll go back to the Air Force,   but if he dies, his story will teach others  not to disobey. Eckhart sends him to Block 13,   warning him that the captain isn’t like them.  Harp enters a building where he finds no soldiers,   only scientists working on making and repairing  gumps. There are lots of those robots around   here too. By following the sound of old music, he  finds a room at the back and meets Captain Leo,   who recites Harp’s file from memory and calls  him out for being very cold. Then Leo grabs some   stuff from a fridge while explaining their  next mission: they must deliver vaccines   to a clinic going through a cholera outbreak. Leo  explains he belongs to Marine Special Operations,   meaning he locates and removes advanced  weapons from insurgents beyond the wire.   Harp doesn’t understand why such a soldier has  so many regular cabinets, so Leo points out   that keeping everything on paper means Russian  hackers can’t access it. After making Harp sign   a non-disclosure agreement, Leo tells him all  about Viktor, the Russian warlord responsible   for a bomb in Ukraine that killed more than  twenty-five thousand people. There’s militia   defending the independence of Ukraine, but Viktor  is planning to get to the Systema Perimeter,   where Russia’s nuclear bombs have been kept since  the Cold War. They must stop Viktor from using   those nukes, so after they deliver the vaccines,  they must gather intel on his next move. They’ll   be leaving in a few minutes, so Leo goes to the  changing room to get ready and Herp is shocked   to see Leo’s real body: it turns out that the  captain is actually an android super-soldier.   On their way out, Lep explains he isn’t AI like  the gumps and that his existence is classified,   however when he sees other soldiers mistreating  the gumps he immediately calls them out for it.   He also reveals that Harp wasn’t assigned just  because, Leo chose him specifically because   he needs someone that can think outside the  box. While Harp puts their things in the car,   he’s suddenly grabbed by Miller and his men,  who hit him and insult him for killing their two   teammates. Before it can escalate, Leo interrupts  them and the group goes away. Afterward Leo and   Harp leave in the captain’s car with a bunch  of soldiers following them in armored trucks,   and Leo explains they’re entering the area outside  the wire where attacks are very frequent and the   American army has no control. During the trip,  Harp shows Leo a picture of his fiance and Leo   teases him a lot for it. Eventually they make  it to a very poor neighborhood filled with armed   survivors and find the road blocked by an aid  truck that is being raided by the locals. The   soldiers leave their trucks with a few gumps to  try to open the way, but the locals aren’t happy   to see them and start throwing things at them.  One of them hits the gump, causing the robot   to immediately shoot the person in return. The  situation is quickly escalating, but Leo orders   his men to stand back because he has a plan.  He lowers all his weapons and approaches the   leader with his hands up, showing that they mean  no harm and explaining they just want to deliver   some vaccines. The locals accept to let them  pass as long as they get to keep the aid truck,   which Leo accepts. Harp is confused since he  thought the US army was supposed to neutralize   and these people are armed, but Leo reminds him  of their priorities. Suddenly, a group of people   opens fire on them from the surrounding buildings:  it turns out to be an ambush by Viktor’s men, who   hit the aid truck on purpose to block the road. A  fierce gunfight begins as the enemy reveals they   brought special grenades to deal with the gumps  and lots of buildings get hit by stray explosives,   causing lots of explosions and walls to crumble  down. This is Harp’s first time in a fight without   a drone and it takes a moment for his ears to  recover from the loud noises that leave them   ringing. There’s no way for the Americans to win  this soon, so Miller tells Leo and Harp to leave   with the vaccines while the soldiers provide  cover. The duo grabs their bags and immediately   runs away, crossing through an old building  to leave the town and reach the countryside.   As they walk to their destination, Leo explains  that the Pentagon made him black because unlike   some blonde hunk, his face conveys neutrality,  which makes people calm. As they cross the woods,   they keep encountering bodies on the ground.  Eventually they reach a refugee camp, but they’re   unaware that a man is following them. While Leo  gives all the supplies to a doctor, Harp watches   the refugees who are doing their best to survive  and begins to understand the horrors of war. Under   Viktor’s orders, the mysterious man suddenly opens  fire, but Leo and Harp move quickly and the doctor   and the nurse are hit instead. Leo shoots the guy  and makes him fall to the ground, then he starts   hurting him to make him talk. The man refuses to  offer any information, so Leo leaves him for the   locals to get revenge for their doctor. Harp wants  to call their commander and ask for a backup,   but Leo explains they’ll only get caught in  bureaucratic hell. Then Leo says they’ll be   leaving in a resistance truck to gather more intel  and at first Harp doesn’t want to because it feels   like befriending the enemy, but he ends up joining  Leo when the captain points out Harp won’t survive   if he keeps walking out there alone. During the  trip, Leo tells Harp he had been right to fire the   missile and save those 38 people in exchange  for two. Then Leo makes Harp touch his arm,   which is cold like steel, to remind him he only  simulates a real man and therefore he also has the   ability to break rules in certain circumstances  and act of his own volition. Eventually they reach   another destroyed town with one building standing:  an orphanage full of kids that use gumps to play   around. Harp meets Leo’s friend Sofiya, who has  some intel to share: the classified access codes   that Viktor needs to operate the nuclear missiles  are hidden in a vault in this part of the city.   She doesn’t have the exact location though,  so they’ll have to visit an arm dealer to get   the details. Before they leave, Leo buys illegal  weapons from her, since that’s how she makes the   money to maintain the orphanage. Harp is disgusted  to learn Leo makes deals like this, and when Leo   tells Sofiya that this is Harp’s first day, she  asks him what he thinks of his work. It turns out   most of these kids weren’t orphaned by the civil  war, they actually were orphaned by the American   bombing. Afterward the group goes to the market  to find the dealer. A guard pretends the dealer   isn’t around, but Leo pushes him against the  door to open it, only to suddenly get attacked.   Leo uses his powerful body to quickly knock out  or even kill all the attackers before grabbing   the dealer to ask for the vault’s location. A  hidden guy tries to attack Sofiya too, but she   reveals she can defend herself and quickly defeats  him. Another guy jumps on Leo to distract him,   giving the dealer time to run away. However Leo  quickly catches up to him and makes him talk:   he admits he sold Russian gumps to Viktor and  offers the address of the bank that holds the   vault. Before the group leaves, Sofiya kills the  dealer for being a traitor. Afterward, Leo kills   the dealer’s driver and takes the car with Harp  to make it to the bank. Harp insists they should   call backup, so Leo finally confesses the truth:  his intel investigation into the Perimeter had   actually been aborted and the Pentagon wanted to  shut Leo down. Everything they’ve been doing falls   under breaking the rules. Harp panics because this  will make his situation with the higher-ups worse,   so Leo tells him he’s free to leave if he thinks  it’s not worth breaking the rules to catch Viktor.   In the end Harp stays. When they finally make it  to the street with the bank, Leo explains that   the Russians are able to detect the signal of his  tracker, so Harp has to take it out of his body.   Harp uses a knife to access Leo’s advanced system  and after taking the tracker out, he’s surprised   to see how quickly it heals itself. Afterward they  both arm themselves and finally approach the bank,   noticing all the vehicles with dead people inside  on the street and the dead guards at the entrance.   The duo slowly makes their way inside and after  silently killing an enemy, Leo finally gives Harp   permission to call Eckhart and ask for backup.  Suddenly Harp notices a person and tries to shoot,   but Leo quickly stops him because it turns out the  building is full of hostages. An employee tells   them where the vault is, so Leo orders Harp to  save the hostages while he goes after the codes.   Then Leo begins making his way deeper inside,  where he fights Viktor’s men using both his   guns and his fists and destroying the bank in the  process. Suddenly a Russian gump shows up and Leo   can’t do enough damage to it with his gun, so Harp  gives him a grenade that Leo throws at the gump to   finally defeat it. Afterward Harp calls Eckhart to  ask for backup while taking the hostages outside,   and Leo keeps running through the corridors,  where he finds another gump that he quickly   defeats with a second grenade. Outside, Harp  sends all the hostages away and watches the   American trucks arrive, only to discover Eckhart  sent gumps but no actual soldiers. At that moment,   he hears some screaming and sees the Russians come  out with even more hostages and a bunch of gumps   of their own. Harp tries to negotiate peacefully,  however a gump notices the hostage is being   threatened and kills the guy, causing a gunfight  between both teams of robots to start. A few   hostages try to run away and end up getting killed  by the fire, but Harp sneaks around and guides the   survivors into a cafe so they can escape through  the back door. Then Harp calls Eckhart to ask why   he didn’t send the Marines and learns that there’s  a drone approaching the area, so he needs to leave   quickly. Harp protests against the plan because  there are still civilians nearby and Leo inside,   but Eckhart says the same thing Harp thought  back then: they’re just collateral. Meanwhile   inside the bank, Leo gets rid of another robot  before jumping through a glass door to attack   the Russians. He defeats most of them, but the guy  with the codes runs upstairs and manages to shoot   Leo in the chest. Thankfully it’s not enough to  stop Leo’s android body and he chases after the   guy until they reach the roof, where he opens  fire. The man is knocked down after a few shots   and Leo pushes him off the roof before patching up  his wound and retrieving the codes. Back to Harp,   he decides to stay a little longer to help the  last civilian, shooting a Russian in the face   to rescue her. Then they run inside the cafe  right before the drone fires the missile and   destroys the area. Seconds later, Harp comes out  of the building feeling dizzy but at least alive,   only to see all the burnt bodies on the streets.  Luckily Leo hid before the explosion too and   rescues Harp to take him away in a car to continue  their journey. When Harp begins feeling better,   he has to deal with the guilt of having piloted  those drones because now he finally understands   he’s a murderer. Then he notices that Leo has  the codes and asks him to call their superiors,   but Leo refuses and Harp demands to know what  truly is going on. Leo reveals that he has chosen   Harp because the android backup system allows  him to ignore human authority if the person is   exhibiting poor judgment and Harp has been doing  nothing but make bad decisions. In fact, the chip   he removed from Leo’s body wasn’t a tracker but a  fail-safe device, and thanks to the drone, Eckhart   now thinks they’re dead, so he has free range to  act. A shocked Harp reaches for his gun to stop   him, but Leo takes out his own weapon first and  knocks Harp out, saying he’s saving his life.   Moments later, Harp wakes up when a few kids  poke him with a stick and he discovers he’s   near another refugee camp. A mysterious van shows  up and Harp tries to run away, but the men quickly   capture him and take him to see the leader of  the resistance, who turns out to be Sofiya. She   explains that Leo will be taking control of the  nuclear missiles for the Resistance and launch   a nuclear strike on the US because they aren’t  really peacekeepers, they’ve only been making   this war worse. Harp thinks this is a mass murder  of millions of innocents, but Sofiya points out   it’s the same kind of collateral the US gets when  they send their drones to the local towns. Then   Sofiya lets Harp go home, thinking there’s nothing  he can do. Meanwhile Leo goes to meet with Viktor   himself, revealing that they’ve been working  together all along. However Leo refuses to give   him the codes and asks for the location of the  missiles, which Viktor refuses to share too. Since   Leo was already angry because Viktor’s gumps tried  to kill him, he immediately grabs Viktor and uses   him as a shield for revenge while he shoots all  the men that surround him. When more soldiers come   in, Leo lets go of Viktor to fight them, killing  them one by one in just a few seconds. Then   Viktor tries to shoot Leo, but the robot grabs  a flag and kills Viktor with it. Afterward Leo   checks the computers and gets the location of the  nukes, so he heads there. Later in the evening,   Harp manages to make it back to the base, where he  tells Miller and Eckhart everything that happened.   They need a way to track Leo’s location to stop  him, so Harp calls Bale and makes her use a drone   to locate Leo, who is driving along the Russian  border. Eckhart points out he can’t send forces   there because it’ll start a war with the Russians,  so Harp volunteers to go after Leo alone.   Before Harp leaves, Miller gives him incendiary  rounds designed to go through armored vehicles,   that way he’ll be able to hurt Leo’s android body.  Soon Bale’s drone loses visuals of Leo, so she   sends the coordinates to Harp to find the place.  Moments later Harp enters a building in the middle   of nowhere and finds all the workers dead, in  fact he sees one fall to his death nearby, which   tells Harp where to find Leo. Carefully sneaking  around, Harp makes it to the control room, only to   discover Leo has already installed the codes. Next  Harp tries to enter the room with the nukes, but   Leo gets to him first and holds him against the  wall by the neck. Harp tries to shoot him with his   regular gun, but it does no damage and Leo manages  to knock him out. Afterward Leo activates the   codes and a five-minute countdown starts as the  pit with the missiles opens, which is immediately   detected by the drone. At that moment Harp  wakes up and shoots Leo with the special rounds,   which immediately start burning down his android  body. Then Harp tries to turn off the codes,   but it’s impossible. Leo uses the chance to reveal  his real plan, saying that he wants to attack   the US to shut down the program that created him  because by removing the humanity out of soldiers,   they increased the fighting, and the gumps have  become the face of a never-ending war. Harp   understands the point but doesn’t want innocents  to die, so he gives Eckhart the okay for the   drone to attack the building. After telling Leo  that humans can do better, Harp runs away right   before Bale launches the missile, destroying the  building, Leo, and the nukes. For a few seconds,   they think Harp is dead as well, but soon he  reports that he’s managed to escape. Harp is now   considered a hero and they give him permission to  go home so he can finally reunite with his fiance.