Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 15

Straight line, people!

Steve’s voice boomed out over the crowd of eleven teams as they shuffled around, forming groups in a line along the wall of the green building. Lynn and her team ended up on one end of the line, which suited her just fine. Behind them to the north was the rest of the base and TD Hunter HQ where their families were no doubt watching in tense anticipation. Before them to the south, the urban combat training ground spread out, looking like a cross between an abandoned warehouse district and a wild-west ghost town. Dozens of camera drones whirred back and forth above their heads, their collective buzzing audible over the mutter of voices and scrape of boots on asphalt.

Lynn looked up to examine the drones and felt a jolt of shock. The small, gray units looked identical to the ones she’d seen loitering overhead all around the city as she’d hunted during the summer. Surely, they weren’t the same ones? Lynn dismissed the idea as absurd. There were billions of drones in use all over the world, all the time. TD Hunter probably used the same model as the Cedar Rapids municipal government or whoever those other ones had belonged to.

The thought didn’t make her feel better, though. Now that the drones were on her mind she couldn’t stop thinking: The whole world is watching.

The whole world.

Watching.

Her.

Lynn swallowed and shifted, trying to tamp down the anxiety before it could shake her. It didn’t matter who was watching. All the footage was augmented. She was just some girl in a cool set of armor. Nobody knew who she was. Nobody would care.

To get her mind off the hard pit of anxiety forming in her stomach, Lynn leaned forward and looked down the line of teams in all their TD Hunter glory. Their combat systems wouldn’t come online until the battle started, so all their weapons were still just batons. But everyone’s skins were on display. Many players had only standard armor skin that came from being fully “plated” up. But others were decked out in some pretty sweet gear.

One guy’s full-face helmet looked straight out of ancient Sparta, though instead of the traditional red crest, it had a multi-colored mohawk of epic proportions. Another guy had massive shoulder plates, the kind ubiquitous to many MMORPG games, with the snarling head of a dragon arching off each shoulder. The sight was as ridiculous as it was cool. Good thing augmented reality armor wasn’t limited by such boorish things as the laws of physics.

Another sight that caught Lynn’s eye was an all-girl team that sported matching skins in a style Lynn could only describe as robo-ninja. She wondered what unique item the skins came from. They looked really awesome and it made her particularly grateful for her Skadi’s Glory.

She wondered suddenly if any of the other teams were checking out her and the guys. The idea made her squirm internally but she reminded herself that her skin looked as impressive and hard-core as they came and her teammates didn’t look too bad either. Their armor was an eclectic mix of medieval, SWAT and space soldier styles, all generated by personal augments and their own tweaks in the avatar settings. Lynn started to wonder how she could get them matching skins too but then she shook her head.

Kill monsters now, play dress-up later. This was no time to get distracted.

She started to limber up, shaking out her arms, cracking her neck, bouncing up and down on her toes. The familiar movements relaxed her and she felt her anxiety flowing away as she brought her focus inward to a razor edge.

Kill. She was here to kill. To destroy. To utterly dominate her enemies and claim her prize. A predatory smile spread across her face as hot battle-lust built inside, buzzing through her with crackling intensity.

This was it.

“Okay, Ronnie,” she subvocalized as her eyes lifted to scan the terrain again. “What’s your plan?”

“Straight in, guns blazing. You heard the mission briefing, we’ve got to hit them hard. We’re not going to win this by being a bunch of timid wimps. We mow them down, kill as many as we can in an hour and get this team qualified—”

“On my mark, a tone will sound,” Steve’s voice rang out again. “At that point your battle systems will engage and start a one-hour countdown on your display—”

“You’re right, we have to be aggressive,” Lynn agreed, speaking quickly. “But we can’t charge in blindly. Assuming the monsters are thinnest at the fringes, I would suggest making for the fence line over to the right. It will put space between us and the other teams so we can find high ground to scout and see what we’re facing—”

“After one hour, Hunters, your battle systems will shut down. When that happens please return to this point for your debriefing.”

“We need to rack up kills,” Ronnie insisted.

“Bryce said this isn’t about kills: It’s about terminating the main boss. It’s going to be an absolute madhouse front and center. Everyone will rush in and more and more monsters will be attracted to the fighting. We won’t have room to swing our weapons, much less make a proper formation. Our combat scores will suck. I wish we could coordinate with the other teams but there’s no time and I doubt any would play ball—”

“All right, Hunters, are you ready? Good luck, be safe and see you on the other side!” Steve stepped back, clearing the area in front of the teams and Lynn heard him say “Three, two, one, mark!”

Her combat display came to life.

So, did the area in front of her. With monsters. A freaking horde of monsters.

Curses and shouts of surprise filled the air as everything descended into chaos.

Lynn had expected something like this, so Wrath and Abomination were already moving, cutting, blasting the crowd of grinder worms and gremlins that had appeared so suddenly and attacked in an oppressive cacophony of roars and clicks. They fell before her like wheat before the reaper’s blade. Within a minute, they’d cleared enough of the area around them to give themselves a moment to breathe and think.

Sweeping her gaze from left to right, Lynn took in the battlefield. Once the initial surprise of so many TDMs had faded, the other teams had started to assault forward, wading easily through the clusters of low-class monsters, many of which didn’t even react until the hunters were on top of them.

By the first row of buildings, the gremlins and grinder worms turned to Grumblins and crusher worms and among the buildings beyond that Lynn could see groups of demons and Orculls. Then she glanced at her overhead map and for a moment her breath froze in her chest. The map was so thick with red dots that they merged into one another and painted the whole area in a sea of crimson. There were clusters of blue dots at the bottom but they could barely be seen among the red.

Lynn’s mind raced, sifting through the sights and sounds, drawing conclusions and formulating strategies.

The TDMs were organized by class—the farther in, the higher the class. TDM rings always had the weakest monsters on the outside, more powerful ones on the inside. So, whatever the biggest threat was, it would be in the center of this training ground. Their mission was to “eliminate the threat,” ergo, they needed to break into the center of this “Charlie Foxtrot” and terminate whatever was in there with extreme prejudice. An hour wasn’t nearly enough time to kill all these monsters, no matter how good they were. But with the other teams attempting a frontal assault, that would draw most of the TDMs’ attention…

“Okay, everyone, we’re not going to follow the lemmings,” Ronnie said on their group channel.

Finally. Took you long enough, Lynn thought.

“We’re going to circle around the side and see if we can get a handle on what we’re facing. Patrol formation, double time. Move out!” Ronnie led them at a trot to the right. They cut through the monsters before them with ease. A single shot or swipe of any weapon reduced them to sparks, even the ghosts who tried to ambush them.

They followed Ronnie southwest to the edge of the training ground, then ran south along the fence line getting farther and farther away from HQ. Soon the yells and shouts of the other embattled teams had faded, only to be replaced by a deep, endless hum of TDM noises—distant but threatening all the same.

“Guys,” Lynn said, speaking evenly despite their brisk pace, “we need to find some high ground. Start searching for any fire escapes, ladders, or places on the outsides of these buildings where we can climb up.”

While her teammates got looking, Lynn decided to try something a bit unconventional.

“Hugo,” she subvocalized, “you have access to my LINC’s omnisensors, right?”

“Of course, Miss Lynn.”

“Okay, can you do a scan of the surrounding area and show me where the strongest electromagnetic signals are coming from?”

“It is within my capabilities, yes. But for what purpose, might I ask?”

“Wherever the electromagnetic pulses are the strongest, that’s where the center of this mob will be.”

“Ah. Astute conclusion, Miss Lynn. Based on my scans, the strongest signals are coming from the south-southeast.”

“Great. Any chance you can put an arrow on my overhead pointing in that direction, no matter which way I turn? Sort of like a compass needle but locked onto the strongest electromagnetic pulses instead of the north pole?”

“Done, Miss Lynn.”

“Can you duplicate it on the rest of the team’s overheads too?”

“They would have to individually request it from their own service AI just as you have, Miss Lynn.”

“Drat,” Lynn muttered, then switched to her private channel with Ronnie. “Have everyone tell their AI to start scanning for EM waves and add a dynamic arrow to their overhead map to point in that direction. Follow the lead of my AI.”

For once, instead of grumbling about how he was the captain and he would do whatever he saw fit, Ronnie simply took her advice and relayed the information.

Well, miracles could happen after all.

Within a few minutes, they’d traveled two-thirds of the way down the side of the training area and their EM detection arrow finally pointed due east. Lynn’s overhead showed that the mass of red was concentrated to the northeast, closer to HQ where most of the blue dots were still clustered. She saw a few groups that had changed direction and were moving east and west instead of south, as if those teams had realized the futility of a direct assault. But they had an uphill battle. In any case, there were plenty of TDMs in front of her team, they were just scattered between the rows of buildings instead of being packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

“What next?” Dan asked.

“Ladder,” Edgar called out, pointing to the corner of a building past the first line of structures.

Ronnie looked around, assessing their position. They were fully stealthed, so none of the low-Delta-Class monsters between them and the building would sense them unless they opened fire. They should be able to sneak right through.

“Let’s take the high ground. Hold your fire, for now, everybody. We don’t want to attract attention until we’re ready for it.”

It was a quick sprint over to the building, a gray, single-story concrete structure. The ladder on the side was a metal affair bolted into the concrete and they made quick work scrambling up it. Once on top, Ronnie told Dan, Mack and Edgar to keep an eye out for monsters, then jerked his head at Lynn in a “come here” gesture.

Lynn’s eyebrows rose so high they might have touched her hairline. What was this? Ronnie openly acknowledging her existence? The miracles were just piling up today.

She came over and spoke quietly.

“Yes?”

“Take a look and tell me what you see,” Ronnie said in such a serious tone that Lynn had to suppress a giggle. He had put one foot up on the rim of the building’s roof and struck a pose with his chest out, pistol muzzles pointing skyward.

Resisting the urge to say “Da, Kommander,” in a fake Russian accent, Lynn turned her attention from her takes-himself-way-too-seriously team captain and scanned the training ground.

Up here, it didn’t look as big and intimidating as on the ground. She could see the fence line encircling the lines of buildings on every side, though a few two-story buildings obscured her line of sight to the east. With all available slots filled with globes, her visual detection range for TDMs was still only about a hundred feet out, then they were invisible except as red dots on Lynn’s overhead. By comparing her compass to the buildings in front of her, the spread of the red dots and the ranks of TDMs either sitting still or patrolling along the streets, she made a rough guestimate as to their target. Then she scanned their sides and rear, looking for anything important she might have missed…

“Cover, cover!” she hissed, grabbing Ronnie and pulling him down. The others followed suit, eyes to the sky as if they were expecting a Tengu attack.

“Elena,” Lynn growled. She rose a bit and pointed, directing Ronnie’s gaze.

“That scheming, conniving, little copycat,” Ronnie said. “She followed us.”

“Maybe,” Lynn said quietly. “Doesn’t really matter. Now we have to worry about her and the TDMs.”

“I bet they’re going to sneak along behind and try to slip past us while we’re fighting to get the big boss themselves.”

“They can try but it won’t do them much good. Remember, the evaluators are watching our every move. They’ll see if Elena and her boy toys try to sabotage us or steal our kills.”

“I hope so,” Ronnie muttered.

“Don’t worry about them for now. Here’s what I’m thinking…”

Lynn laid out her plan. Ronnie complained about it. She respectfully pointed out the flaws in his logic. He glared daggers at her. Finally, they agreed on a modified version and all was well with the universe.

Teamwork at its finest.

With Ronnie in the lead, they snuck down off the roof and picked their way across the street, around another building and across the next street, avoiding all the TDMs. A single engagement would put them on the radar of every monster within a mile and it would only get worse from there. Lynn’s heart pounded in her throat as they crept but they safely reached the building they’d been aiming for without incident and without any further sign of Elena and her team.

The new building also had a ladder and they scrambled up to their new position—the closest Lynn had determined they could get to their target without being detected by the TDMs on the ground. Once on the roof, they set up in a circle formation and each one equipped their Disruptor Rifles. Then, at a nod from Ronnie, they started duck hunting.

Or roc hunting, anyway.

It wasn’t hard to pick the monsters out, though the camera drones flying around overhead were an annoying distraction. The weird manta-ray looking creatures were slowly circling in clusters over various buildings scattered across the training ground, feeding on beams of EM energy invisible to the human eye, Lynn assumed. With five Disruptor Rifles trained on them, though, they didn’t stay feeding for long. Within thirty seconds, Lynn and her team had downed most of the rocs within range. It took thirty more seconds for the first Tengu to arrive.

Dang. That was fast. Lynn had thought they’d have several minutes at least.

The ominous tone started faint at first, then louder. Then a second tone, slightly lower, joined it. Then a third.

“We’re gonna get creamed,” Dan said. “Why are there so many of them?”

“Mishipishi or whatever?” Mack replied.

“Shut up and keep your eyes peeled,” Ronnie said.

Dan switched to his Plasma Rifle while the rest of them equipped their own preferred ranged weapon and crouched in readiness, eyes on the sky.

“There they are!” Mack yelled, pointing above and to the east.

Three Tengus appeared in Lynn’s vision, all three plunging down in a steep dive. And all three aimed straight at her.

“Bring it, you half-plucked turkeys,” she muttered as she scrambled away from the edge of the roof to the center and stood tall, Abomination raised and tracking.

Dan’s Plasma Rifle started spitting but the Tengus didn’t shift their aim to him. Odd. Still, it might be better for her team, since it let everyone else focus on shooting while she worried about dodging.

With how fast the Tengus were moving, Lynn knew she would have mere seconds to shoot with her close range pistol before she had to take cover. She held Abomination aloft and tracked the lead Tengu, waiting, steady…

At the last second she squeezed off three rapid shots, then dove for the roof. She rolled, coming to rest on her back where she kept shooting as the Tengus pulled out of their dive, screeching in fury. Her team’s weapons spit and boomed around her until suddenly one of the Tengus exploded. Then the second, then the third.

“Good shooting, team!” Ronnie called and Lynn glowed inside. Look at little Ronnie, complimenting excellent work and building team morale. There was hope for him yet, she just knew it.

Another high tone started in the distance and they scrambled to reset.

“How many of these bird-brains are there?” Edgar muttered.

Five, as it turned out. At least that’s how many they took down before they heard no more high tones. And all five Tengus had gone straight for Lynn, despite the hail of bullets from everyone else.

With no more aerial monsters visible, Stage One of their plan was complete and they got ready to hit the streets and start Stage Two. Before they could start climbing down, though, shouts broke out nearby and they raced to the edge of the roof to see what was going on. Lynn grinned. It looked like Elena and her crew had been spotted and would be too busy fighting off TDMs for the foreseeable future to cause them any trouble.

Ronnie led the way down the ladder and they assumed their usual attack formation, spread across the street in a loose V. By the time Ronnie gave them the signal to advance, Lynn’s fingers were extra twitchy and she was sooo ready to kill stuff. It was almost physically painful to hold herself back. But soon enough she knew they would be stuck in the thick of it and she could fight to her heart’s content.

She kept her position, staying in line with Mack and Edgar as they set off at a brisk pace, taking out any TDM in their path with practiced ease and collecting ichor and other supplies on the move. The imps, grinder worms, ghosts and gremlins were barely an afterthought and even the Grumblins and demons were child’s play at this point. It wasn’t until they got to the Orculls that they started to slow. But not too much. Timing was everything.

Lynn glanced at the countdown on her display. Thirty-seven minutes left.

The monsters started coming in troops instead of twos and threes. Word seemed to be spreading among the TDMs, or at least the algorithm had finally caught on to where they were.

Charlie Class monsters like death worms and Spithra appeared, while Ghasts and Phasmas tried to get behind their formation to ambush them. The buildings on either side of the street made things harder. The TDMs casually moved through the walls and acted like the buildings didn’t exist, probably because the structures were training props rather than actual buildings where people lived and worked day in and day out. Fortunately, everyone’s overhead map was unhindered by roofs or walls and gave them a clear three-sixty view of any approaching dots.

Ten minutes and two blocks later, they found another building with a ladder and scrambled up it for a breather. They quickly discovered that Ghasts and Phasmas were not bothered by their change in altitude and kept popping out of the roof under their feet. It was better than the thickening horde down below, though, so they took what they could get. Lynn felt pride as she looked around at her teammates, busy resupplying and rebuffing the occasional sneak attack. They’d come a long way from the out of shape, baton-flailing place where they’d begun. They weren’t A-Team material, not yet. But they were a solid B-Team with plenty of room to grow.

Their break didn’t last more than a minute. Monsters had started to swarm around the building and Ronnie worried they’d get stuck up there, so they climbed down and made a break through the mob to a clearer part of the street. They took some damage but that was inevitable.

Thanks to Skadi’s Horde, it was less than they’d expected—in such tight quarters their proximity bonus was at the max. They were able to kill most things in a shot or two and the tougher monsters Lynn and Ronnie quickly skewered with their high-damage blades, while Edgar blasted away to clear a path forward. Considering their collective rate of fire, Lynn was glad they weren’t shooting real weapons and spewing a hail of scorching brass everywhere. Plus, lugging all that ammo around would have been a pain in the butt.

Ah, the joys of gaming in augmented reality. All the fun of reality with none of the sucky parts. Well, except for the ungodly humidity and heat…and the bruises and scrapes…and other players trying to assault you.

Speaking of other players…

Lynn only checked her overhead out of sheer habit. Things were crazy with all the yelling and monster noises and targets rushing her from every side. But she happened to flick her eyes to it out of habit and noticed the cluster of blue dots one street over. She assigned a small part of her brain to check the rival team’s progress periodically, then went back to focusing on not dying.

Holy moly these monsters were getting thick. Talk about target rich environment.

Their team was trying to assault forward down the asphalt street. About a block ahead, the street opened up into a little square and Lynn could see the shoulder-to-shoulder ranks of towering Namahags and Penagals glaring malevolently, waiting for them. That was the central ring and behind them should be whatever the TDMs were protecting—Mishipeshu.

But between them and their goal was a thickening soup of hissing, growling and shrieking attackers of every type. There were even Vargs and Stalkers among them. They weren’t much of a threat damage- or strength-wise but they were fast. It was all Lynn and her team could do to stab, slash, shoot and blast their way forward foot by foot without being overwhelmed. They barely had time to snatch up extra ichor, plates and Oneg and even Lynn steadily used up her supply of health, so she couldn’t imagine how bad it was for the guys.

Lynn glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes left.

Several agonizing minutes later they were halfway down the block toward the square when a huge shape leaped over the shoulder-to-shoulder monsters ahead and barreled down the street toward them.

“Contact front! Manticar!” Edgar yelled, getting their attention.

“Concentrate fire,” Ronnie called, switching from his Plasma Sword to double Plasma Pistols.

Miraculously, the other TDMs scattered away from the hulking monster, pulling back as if afraid to come into contact with it. It gave the whole team a sliver of relief to switch their focus.

The Manticar was easily seven feet tall at the shoulder with a heavily muscled frame that looked nothing so much as like a massive saber-toothed tiger. But instead of having a normal tail, over its shoulder curved three massive stingers that bobbed with the creatures’ earth-shaking lope.

Wait, earth-shaking? Why did her body feel a ghost of a vibration with each bound of that crazy beast that was about to eat them for breakfast? Was her baton malfunctioning?

The thought was there and gone again and then she was rushing forward to support Edgar, pouring fire into the Manticar so fast her trigger finger burned and threatened to seize up. In the few seconds it took the beast to close the distance with them, they pounded it with all they had but it wasn’t enough.

“Ronnie, assault!” Lynn yelled and leaped forward. There was no way they could survive huddled in one place. Better for her and Ronnie to distract it and give the others a chance to fill it with plasma.

Ronnie was only a split second behind her, guns blazing along with her Abomination as they split and tried to flank the Manticar that dove toward their group. Apparently Edgar’s Blunderbuss wasn’t distracting enough, because its head swung to the side, tracking her with eyes that glowed red in her AR vision. It snapped its jaws at her and she barely dodged, only to get hit from overhead with all three of its stingers.

Lynn swore violently and stumbled back, trying to get out of range as she yelled at Hugo to hit her with some Oneg. That one strike had eaten up half her remaining health.

But the Manticar didn’t give her any chance for space. It bore down on her with a single-minded focus that made her curse the stupid algorithm six ways to Sunday. Why was it picking on her?

She dodged and rolled, staying just ahead of those massive teeth and claws, but every few seconds the Manticar’s terrifying stingers stabbed down and inevitably one or more would get her. She couldn’t move fast enough or focus on the threats from so many angles at once. She was guzzling Oneg at an alarming rate and only barely staying alive.

“Ronnie, we’re out,” she yelled into her private channel, too out of breath to subvocalize. “I’m ten seconds from dying. We all need to book it, just run and get out as fast as we can before we die.”

She didn’t wait for a reply but made one last stab at the Manticar, hoping it would stun it or push it back.

“COME ON YOU DANG DIRTY HEATHENS!” Lynn yelled into the group channel as she turned and ran for her life. “GET YOUR BUTTS TO THE CHOPPER! WE ARE DIDI MAO!”

She felt like a fool but there was no time for strategy, no time for a measured, controlled retreat. There was only run or die.

To her immense relief, the guys came hot on her tail. They dodged as they ran, trying to avoid going straight through any of the straggler TDMs that had gathered in the clear path behind them. The Manticar, while fast, wasn’t faster than an all-out sprint and after a block or so it stopped chasing them—well, her—and skidded to a stop with a roaring scream of triumph.

Lynn didn’t care. She was alive to fight again and that’s all that mattered.

“Roof,” Lynn gasped out and they all scrambled up the ladder of the building they’d used to snipe the Rocs and Tengus. Once on top, she bent over with her hands braced on her knees to catch her breath. She only gave herself a few seconds, though, because they were far from safe.

Once she was no longer gasping, she straightened and kept a lookout as Ronnie reminded them all to refill their slots and they took turns sipping from Lynn’s hydration pack.

“Did you just make a Tropic Thunder reference?” Dan asked.

“For a second there, I thought Larry had showed up,” Mack said, rubbing his whiskers. “I was so relieved. We might die but Larry would save the day.”

“Dang dirty heathens?” Edgar asked, placidly chewing gum.

“Was…all I could…think of?” Lynn said, still panting.

The moment of respite was enough for her to gather her thoughts, check her overhead and admit to herself what they had to do.

She did not like it. Not one single bit.

Disappointment and frustration churned in her chest but she closed her eyes, took a deep calming breath and let it all flow away. No time for feelings, no time for hesitation.

Mack was right. It was time to put her Larry on.

She was a cold, hard killer who didn’t let anyone, or anything, get in her way. Not even herself.

Lynn stepped over to Ronnie and caught his eye.

“Permission to speak freely?” she asked. It was something she’d learned that NCOs said to their officers—or that any subordinate said to their superior—when they knew their superior wasn’t going to like what came next. It let the subordinate be frank without being accused of insubordination. In Lynn’s case, she just needed Ronnie to feel like he was in charge and had a choice in the matter so he would listen to her. Jerkitude at this point would get them all killed.

“Yeah, sure,” Ronnie said slowly, then glanced around. Everyone was looking at them. He pursed his lips but nodded at her to continue.

“We need a plan B,” Lynn said, addressing her whole team. “We don’t have enough firepower or health to make it past that Manticar and the last line of defenders and we don’t have time to take it slow and pick off the bastards from a distance. We have one more chance at this thing and I know how we can do it.”

She paused and saw the exhaustion she felt in her bones reflected in each of her teammates eyes. Exhaustion…but also determination.

“CRC,” she said.

“What?”

“No!”

“No way. We are not teaming up with those cheaters!” Ronnie declared.

“Shut up and listen,” Lynn snapped, acutely aware of the ticking clock. “We aren’t strong enough to do this raid alone. It’s clearly set up as a group exercise. Bigger than one team. So, either we hold back and kill as many monsters in the time left as we can, which makes us no better than everyone else, or we team up with Elena’s crew, the only group close enough to assist, and complete the mission.

“Even if we take a lot of damage or even die in the attempt, it won’t matter. This isn’t about scores and points anymore. It’s about do we have what it takes to get the job done. It’s about completing the mission. First Sergeant Bryce said to do whatever was necessary. And this is necessary. So, suck it up and let’s do it.”

Ronnie’s eyes blazed and his jaw was clenched so hard Lynn could imagine she heard his teeth grinding together. He was probably trying to think of an alternative, any alternative. But there was none.

“We can’t trust them,” he ground out.

“I know. But if they try to betray us in the thick of things, they’ll die just as fast as we will and they’ll know that. Plus, the monitors are watching, so if they try anything overt they’ll get kicked out of the game.”

Lynn glanced up as she said it, eyes scanning the sky for…ah, there it was. She gave a jaunty salute to the drone hovering above and returned her attention to her team.

“—and Elena won’t go for it,” Dan was saying as he shook his head.

“That’s why I’m going to ignore her,” Lynn said. “Let me do the talking. I’ll get Connor on board and Elena won’t have a choice but to fall in line if she wants her precious team to qualify.”

“I’m in,” Edgar said, popping his gum. “But time’s a wasting.”

“Oookay?” Dan said, raising one hand palm upward. “If you say so.”

Ronnie didn’t respond, just clenched his jaw harder and glared at her.

“We don’t have time, Ronnie!” Lynn hissed, her body so tense she felt ready to snap. “Five million dollars. Full ride scholarship. Guaranteed job in gaming.”

“Fine! Fine!” Ronnie shouted, grabbing his hair and nearly tearing it out. “Let’s get this over with.”

Lynn could see Elena’s team a block down as they huddled against the side of a building, obviously trying to catch their own breath after a similar failed attempt to assault the TDM circle. She led the way down the ladder and marched straight over to the group. A few ghosts tried to accost her on the way over but she shot the whispering bastards without even looking.

Not bothering with a preamble or greeting, Lynn marched right up to Connor.

“Neither of us can get through alone, so we’re going to double our fire power, punch through and kill whatever is inside together. Teaming up is the only way to win.”

“Uh…” The blond-headed athlete glanced to the side at Elena, whose momentary shock had kept her from interrupting Lynn. But that didn’t last long.

“How dare you! We’re not helping you, you crazy b—”

“SHUT YOUR PIEHOLE RIGHT NOW OR I’LL SHUT IT FOR YOU!” Lynn bellowed, getting right up in Elena’s face.

The pop-girl stumbled back, eyes wide and mouth gaping.

“We don’t have time to argue,” Lynn continued, voice hard, “So, if you want your team to qualify you’ll shut your mouth and let the people who know what they’re doing get the job done.”

“I—You—”

Lynn turned away from the spluttering girl and back to Connor.

“Do you want to win, or do you want to waste your time and look like a fool?”

Connor worked his jaw thoughtfully, his expression firming as he gave Lynn a long look.

“We are not working together! You three, get these losers out of our way!”

“Dave, Peter, Jerry, don’t move,” Connor snapped without taking his eyes off Lynn.

“How dare you?!” Elena snapped. “I run this…”

“Shut up, Elena,” Connor said then nodded at Lynn. “What’s your plan?”

“I will not shut up!” Elena shouted. “My father has…”

“Your father isn’t here,” Connor said, spinning towards her like an angry panther. “We agreed. You supply the equipment and the financing and in return you got to look good for the camera. I run the game. But gaming is about winning. Which I’m in charge of, not you. And we’re not going to win if you don’t shut your stupid mouth. Then you will look like an idiot in stream, no matter what you do. You’ll always be the loser who was all mouth no game. All your followers dry up. So. You either shut your fool mouth and let the professionals figure out how to win, or you lose all your status points and your followers and all the rest. Simple as that.”

Elena looked at him furiously then looked at Lynn.

“She’s no professional,” Elena snapped. “She’s a fatty nobody.”

“Oh. My. Lord,” Lynn said, shaking her head. “Will you for God’s sake lay off the fat shaming? And in case you haven’t noticed, it’s muscle not fat these days, you idiotic…b-b—witch!”

Lynn really hated the B word and couldn’t bring herself to say it, true though it might be.

“She’s a nobody to people like, well, you who don’t keep up with gaming,” Connor said, staccato. He knew time was short. “She’s one of the absolute best in the league at this game. She’s more of a celebrity than you are and it means all of her followers, none of which follow you, will suddenly see you in a new, and better, light. You’ll get more followers out of it.”

Followers? Since when? Lynn thought then pushed it aside. No time.

“I…” Elena said, spluttering. “She’s…She…”

“Discussion is over, Elena,” Connor snapped. Clearly, he was a guy who could make a decision in the crunch. “We’re allied. Call the play,” he added, nodding at Lynn.

“All right, listen up!” Lynn shouted, turning to look at the whole group. “CRC has the left, Wolves have the right. That Manticar was locked on to me before. If it stays on me again I’ll keep it busy while you guys take it out. We can’t get to Mishipeshu until it’s dead.

“After that, we advance as fast as possible before the TDMs regroup. Hit the final line fast and hard and punch through. They’ll swarm us from behind as soon as we do, so we have to run forward and get as close to the target as possible. I don’t think lower-level monsters like being near the big baddies, so hopefully that’ll give us a bit of room to work.

“Each team’s assault element has to hammer away at it while the support elements hold off the mob. Hopefully we’ll time it right so that once we eliminate the target, our hour will be up and everything will shut down.”

Lynn glanced at the clock. Ten minutes.

“Time’s up. Let’s move out!” Lynn called and turned to Ronnie, whose mouth was open as if he were about to protest. “Lead the way,” she said.

He stared at her for a beat, then closed his mouth and turned, calling orders to the rest of his team. Lynn glanced over at Connor and saw him bent and whispering furiously in Elena’s ear. Her face was murderous and when her eyes met Lynn’s, Lynn knew exactly who it was Elena wanted to murder.

Lynn gave the pop-girl a wolfish grin and turned to follow Ronnie.

Their two teams broke into a trot, picking off any TDMs that took an interest as they passed. In no time they had retraced their steps to the block before the open square. The TDMs were less thick than before but there were still plenty loitering around, just waiting for an enemy to get within their detection range.

Keeping their pace steady, their formation advanced down the street. The difference from before was noticeable. With twice the firepower and fewer targets, they were able to pick off the monsters fast enough to keep from getting bogged down in melee.

“Here comes the Manticar!” Mack shouted as the giant creature leapt over the wall of TDMs and raced toward them once more. As planned, their group slowed and took up a defense position, letting the monster come to them where there was more open space. Lynn stood in front of their formation, alone, weapons held at either side.

“Come and get me you big, ugly bastard,” she muttered, eyes locked on the approaching beast.

It obliged, taking one last leap to pounce on her with its front paws. But she was no longer there. She dove forward and rolled, getting low enough to avoid the gnashing teeth and get past the beast before popping back up and spinning to face it. Directly above her, three scorpionlike tails waved, their poisoned tips wickedly curved. But just as she’d suspected, instead of the tails stabbing down at her from where they were, the Manticar spun its entire body, trying to get her back in its sights.

Bingo.

Lynn’s first impulse had been to keep in front of the creature and as far away from those tails as possible. But they had plenty of reach. So, instead, she had to get closer, had to stay right on the Manticar’s tail, so to speak, where it couldn’t see her.

They danced in a deadly whirlwind. Lynn employed Wrath and Abomination when she could but mostly she held onto them for dear life as she rolled and spun, ran and dodged. All she had to do was stay alive a little bit longer…just a little longer…

The Manticar finally exploded and Lynn swore she felt a faint shockwave, as if some kind of energy had been released with the monster’s demise. But she knew that was impossible, since the Manticar was just a bunch of pixels superimposed on her retinas. The surge she felt must have been her adrenaline spike at their victory.

She couldn’t dwell on it, though, because the moment the big beast was gone, all the other monsters began to advance. She had just enough time to scoop up the significant pile of supplies and loot that had appeared where the Manticar had been standing. Then—

“Charge!”

Ronnie’s yell rang out across the street and Lynn whooped, grinning crazily as she joined him and Connor at the point of their spear-head formation. Edgar was close behind along with one of the three stooges holding a Blunderbuss of his own, while Dan and Mack held down the right flank and the two other stooges focused on the left. Elena ran along in the middle of their group, clutching her rifle with wide eyes and generally being useless.

The cacophony of the monsters around them was overwhelming and Lynn barked at Hugo to lower her volume on the right so she could still hear her team channel.

Thirty feet left between them and the last ring of monsters.

Twenty feet.

Ten feet.

For the Horde!!” Dan hollered at the top of his lungs right before they hit.

Lynn descended in a whirlwind of death, laughing and whooping with abandon as battle lust took her. Wrath sliced and Abomination boomed as she, Ronnie and Connor cut through the first rank of Namahag and Penagals and started on the second.

Gasping, shouting, laughing.

Lungs aching, muscles pumping, adrenaline coursing like molten electricity through her limbs.

This was fun. Oh so much fun. She never wanted to do anything else but this.

They were through almost before she realized it. Their blitz assault had torn a ten-foot-wide gap in the inner and outer ring of TDMs.

A gap which was closed as quickly as it had been torn open when every monster in the circle did an about face and advanced. The monsters outside the circle crowded in, too, creating more and more layers until they formed a thick wall of gnashing teeth and grasping claws.

And their two teams were inside it all.

Peachy.

Lynn let her teammates worry about what was behind them as she lifted her eyes to see what was ahead. And lifted a little more.

Son of a motherless goat, that bastard was ugly.

In the middle of the swiftly contracting circle sat a mountainous, writhing mass of tentacles. It looked like a few dozen octopi with genital warts had merged into a single entity and then consumed an entire vat of growth hormones. The result loomed twelve feet over their heads and reached toward them with slimy-looking arms at least a foot thick.

They’d found Mishipeshu. Now if they could just do something about it.

Lynn’s display flashed red with damage, then again and again. Crimson energy bolts were spitting out of ugly slits in the monster’s hide nestled between its tentacles. Lynn tried dodging the bolts. No dice. They were coming too fast. “CRC cover rear! Wolves! We’ve got to hit it with all we’ve got. Go, go, go!”

Their combined group stopped just out of reach of the thrashing tentacles—no imagination was needed to know that those were bad news—and everyone took up a stance. Skadi’s Wolves poured fire into Mishipeshu while the CRCs hammered at the swiftly encircling mob around them.

“We’re all gonna die!” Ronnie hollered from where he stood beside her, shooting Mishipeshu with both Plasma Pistols.

“IT SHALL BE A GLORIOUS DEATH!” Edgar shouted, laughing hysterically.

Within sixty seconds, though, it became clear they wouldn’t be able to. They were going through Oneg too fast and there were far too many TDMs to hold off all at once. The only way to kill Mishipeshu was with more teams. Most of which were bogged down or dead trying a frontal assault.

Crap.

Lynn felt a trickle of fear. She wasn’t even sure why. Was she afraid of failing? Or was it her body’s instinctive reaction to the realism of the situation?

In the end, it didn’t matter, because in exactly—Lynn checked the clock—three minutes and twenty-four seconds the game would be over and she would have lost her chance at a future that had inspired her to live again for the first time since her father had died.

A stab of despair twisted in her gut. Her Lynn side wanted to curl up in a ball and cry—which was fine because her Larry side simply gave her a sound mental thrashing and shoved them both back into the game with their combined middle fingers raised to the sky.

It was do or die—so, time to do something crazy.

“Hold on as long as you can, Skadi’s Wolves,” Lynn yelled, “I’m going to end this!”

“What?” Ronnie yelped, fire faltering for a second.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Edgar yelled from her other side, taking his eyes off Mishipeshu long enough to throw her a worried look.

“I’m going to either finish it or die trying!” She ignored their protests and switched her Plasma Pistol back to Wrath, clutching the obsidian black blade in one hand and her trusty Abomination in the other.

Then she charged.

When she reached the tentacles, she didn’t stop.

When she reached Mishipeshu’s massive lumpy body, she didn’t stop—she drove right through its incredibly realistic, slimy hide.

Quiet descended.

It was the oddest sensation, the abrupt dimming of sight and sound combined with a dizzy, swooping feeling like she was spinning uncontrollably in a massive free-fall. Her display flickered, as if the app was glitching but it didn’t shut off. So, instead of retreating, Lynn planted her feet, chalked the disorientation up to the weird thing-y-majig reaction Steve had warned about and started blasting away with Abomination in her left hand and slashing back and forth with Wrath in her right. All around her was dim, gray mist that flashed crimson in a synchronous pattern with her attacks. She could only barely see the scene she’d left, and the shouts, roars and blasts of the battle were dull thuds in her ears. And what was that strange staticky sound?

“—Miss Lynn, what are you—extremely irregular—highly questionable, possibly even dangerous!” came Hugo’s voice, fading in and out with the erratic flickering of her display.

“I’m killing this bastard from the inside!” Lynn shouted. Hm, even her own voice sounded muffled to her ears. But it didn’t matter, because her gamble had paid off—the app was registering her attacks from inside Mishipeshu. It didn’t seem to know what to do about damage to her, since there was literally no way for the monster to “hit” her. It seemed to settle on a steady draining of her health. But as long as she kept throwing Oneg at it, she might actually last long enough—

She stumbled suddenly to the side as a wave of dizziness washed over her but then righted herself. Steve had not been joking about that over-stimulation stuff. But she only had to hold on a little longer.

“—what in the world—thinking? This—insane!”

“Who dares, wins, Hugo,” Lynn shouted and grinned. Despite the dizziness, her finger never stopped pulling the trigger and her sword never stopped moving.

In those endless seconds, she squinted hard at her team on the outside and saw them stop fighting one by one, their Hunter armor and lethal-looking weapons disappearing from view. They were dying and their apps were shutting down. Elena’s team wasn’t doing any better and the moment in which Elena herself threw down her inert batons and stomped off in a rage sent a surge of sweet pleasure straight to Lynn’s brain.

Speaking of her brain, it felt like someone had decided to start pounding it with a mallet. Yup, that was just what she needed right now, a headache.

Her trigger finger and sword arm kept pumping, like they had a mind of their own, which was good, because her mind was getting awfully distracted. Where had her display gone? Ah, there it was.

“—abort! Miss Lynn, you must abort—will be forced to—danger of equipment malfunction.”

“Just—thirty—more—seconds, Hugo,” Lynn panted. She could see the clock. It was counting down. Wasn’t Mishipeshu supposed to be dead by now? It was supposed to die. Hurry up, stupid thing! When she glanced up again, she saw her entire team in a line, shouting and waving at her. But she shut out the noise, concentrating instead on the countdown.

Fifteen seconds. She had this.

Die, Mishipeshu, die!

The pounding of her heart in her chest seemed to join the throbbing in her head as she kept striking. A growing heat made her gasp for air and she locked her knees to stay upright. Why was she suddenly burning up? Just a little longer, then she could lie down and rest and take a sip of water.

Ten seconds.

She was good. Almost there.

Five seconds.

Three seconds.

In a flash so brilliant that she shut her eyes against it—or at least she thought she did—everything around her exploded. When she opened them again, she saw sparkling lights raining down from the sky as the sun set and—wait a minute, why was it getting dark all of a sudden?


Back | Next
Framed