Chapter 47: Life Unseen

The fireteam skulked through the first floor of Mt. Hollow, bereft of weapons. Not that Buttstroke and the rest needed them. Only simulated Pithites patrolled the halls, invisible except in the WarFace. It seemed the game saved the actual bots for the weekend combat exercises, not for training.

Errorist took point, one eye closed to read the motion tracker. Model had already taken his turn and led the fireteam to its goal off to the right of the entrance, the first of four. Of course, Model hadn’t even set off the bot’s warning alert, the sound effect that let them know when they were about to get caught. If he had, the fireteam would have never let him live down the blow to his invader reputation.

With trembling legs, Errorist led the team toward their second goal. Like Model, he could move unseen, but Model shifted through the darkness like he belonged there. The labor peon must have spent most of his life imperceptible while he scuttled from place to place. At least it made him afraid enough to not get caught.

Errorist came to the corner. To the left, the hallway led to the entrance; to the right continued on toward the goal. He scanned it with the motion tracker and motioned to move out.

They came to an alcove before the hallway ended in a T-junction. Footsteps stumbled behind Buttstroke. All the color in Dozer’s face evacuated his skin. From underneath the brim of his helmet, he peered down at the floor. Something must have spooked the asshole, something besides the simulated bots around them.

Buttstroke waved his hand in front of Dozer’s face. “Heads up,” he sent out over comm.

Dozer broke away from whatever image had manifested in his mind. “What?” The word didn’t hold any defiance. More like whatever head loop he got stuck in still tried to pull him back in. At least the dumbass had the wherewithal to reply over the comm.

Buttstroke turned his back on him. “We close?”

“Yeah.” Errorist scooted to the corner of the alcove. “Get in cover! One’s coming!”

Dozer moved to get in behind Model, but Buttstroke cut him off because Dozer could get fucked. He pressed his bulk into the corner. The bowman shuddered with the change of momentum and slipped in behind Errorist.

Something like a spark arced from Model’s skin and set off cascading sensations of pleasure on his own. That attraction hadn’t lessened even though Model existed in this male form, though Model despised him still. Not that it mattered. The game wouldn’t ever let Buttstroke act on his attraction.

Model shuddered and squirmed away as far as he could without exposing them all to the simulated bot.

Errorist sipped in an almost inaudible breath through his clenched teeth. His brow furrowed over his eyes, squeezed shut. Something on the motion tracker stressed him out.

“We busted?” Buttstroke curled his toes, almost as if they absorbed the radiating tension from Errorist.

Errorist ground his teeth. “Not yet.” He opened his eyes and eyed the door bedside Buttstroke. “Not that we could do anything about it now.” Halting strain peppered the words over the comm.

Buttstroke closed an eye and pulled up the motion tracker. The DI didn’t straight-out say they shouldn’t check out the tracker when another teammate led, but Buttstroke would ask for forgiveness if it came to that. Hadfield had taught him only peons asked for permission.

Virtual Pithite footsteps sounded in Buttstroke’s ear, more on the side toward the T-junction—just like real life. The red dot approached the junction. A yellow area encircled it, just like how the DI explained on his classroom blackboard. Any sound inside it would catch the bot’s attention. The circle would expand if anyone on the fireteam made a loud noise, but Buttstroke didn’t want to test it. Once he learned the system, he’d push the limits. First things first.

A color-coded cone extended from the bot’s eyes and shifted from side to side. If they got caught in that danger zone, the bot would have visual confirmation of the presence of interlopers. The cone shifted colors while it lengthened and shortened, a representation of the bot’s gaze. If the cone shortened and turned blue, that meant the bot looked toward the ceiling; shortened and green meant the bot looked at the floor. During the bums-in-desks training, the DI gave them a rhyming mnemonic device to keep the color codes straight:

Blue sky high. Green meadow low.

The red dot Pithite approached the t-junction, and the yellow audible zone enveloped the fireteam. The bot’s visual cone crested the junction. It shifted from purple to red, extended down the length of the hallway, and divided the fireteam into two. No wonder Errorist’s sphincter puckered up tight. If the bot turned the corner, he and Dozer would have nowhere to go. Buttstroke sucked his gut in.

Instead, the cone narrowed and disappeared from the hallway. The manufactured footsteps continued past the T-junction. Buttstroke released the tension in his abs.

Errorist relaxed the tension in his shoulders. “Okay. We’re ready.”

They filtered out from the cover of the alcove and did a quick time stride to the T-junction. Better to move fast before another red dot came down the hall at them.

In the lead, Errorist halted and closed his eyes. “We got it.”

“Good work, Err.” Buttstroke put one arm over Errorist’s shoulders and gave him a friendly shake.

Errorist returned the gesture with a restrained curl at the corner of his mouth. The guy had gotten to the goal with no one killed, simulated or otherwise. He deserved a pat on the back, and the other two weren’t about to dish out any encouragement. Instead, Model and Dozer pretended to look down the hallway for the next goal.

Buttstroke let go of Errorist’s shoulders. “So, was I right?”

“Maybe?” Errorist shrugged. “I didn’t see any blips appear on the explored areas of the map.”

“You see?” Buttstroke spread his arms wide. “Enemies spawn like any other game. When I’m right, I’m right.”

“And when you’re wrong,” Model wouldn’t look him in the eye, “you’re so wrong.”

“Whatever.” Buttstroke closed one eye and scanned the walls. He found the floating, luminescent, white diamond with GOAL above in the distance, enough to point him in the right direction. “I’ll take the next leg.”

Dozer might have rolled his eyes. Hard to tell with him with his gaze on anything but the fireteam. Not that his opinion mattered.

Some red dots traveled along the hallways already explored. A few red blips formed into dots, crossed through the known parts of the map, and transmuted back into blips. The occasional blue blip passed over the fireteam’s location, a supposed Pithite above them on their way into the AO, the illusion the enemy has their own existence once unobserved.

One of those red blips at the far end of the hall came alive, formed into a dot, and came around the corner.

“Get in cover!” Buttstroke’s words came over the comm strained. He rushed behind a strut, and the fireteam split into balanced pairs on each side. When given the choice, the fireteam broke along the sides of conflict, with Errorist behind and the other two as far from Buttstroke as possible.

The red cone passed across the hallway, blocked only by the struts. Their right angles cut into the cone’s sides. While Buttstroke and the fireteam huddled in the safety of its shadow, he dropped the tracker from the WarFace. It exposed the silhouette of the lone Pithite where the red dot showed. The infobox above its head said, “Pithite Infantry (simulated).”

Buttstroke brought up the tracker again. The hall between the bot and the fireteam had a four-way intersection, and the bot had a 66% chance it would take a left or right. But if the thing went straight, they’d find themselves trapped. Its yellow zone advanced toward the fireteam. He had to decide.

“Wait for my signal.” Buttstroke stuck a thumb back where they just came from. “We’re gonna retreat to that nook.”

“Re-!” Dozer spoke out loud, almost shouted, before he switched to the comm. “Retreat?”

The yellow zone expanded but stopped short of the struts. The bot’s visual cone shrank in its approach to the intersection. Maybe the Pithite checked out the other hallways while it decided where to go.

“Shut up and move now!”

The fireteam stuck to the walls and used the cover of the struts as long as they could. Dozer—that asshole—shuffled his feet and scuffed the soles of his boots against the metal floor. The yellow zone expanded. It encroached on the fireteam and nipped at their heels.

Model sped around Dozer and disappeared behind the corner, quiet as a ghost. The fabric of Errorist’s trousers brushed against itself while he followed. The invisible yellow cloud had almost caught up with them. Buttstroke moved to take the quickest route around the corner. Dozer cut him off. Whether the dickhead meant to, Buttstroke couldn’t tell.

Before Buttstroke could get around the corner, a sphincter-puckering REEEE erupted in their ears, the warning alert the bot had almost spotted them.

Mother fucker!