Nic felt enemy bullets rip through his skin.

“Agh!” he cried out in his SimSuit. “That... really...”

He’d have time to dwell on the pain later. Right now, he was in his first real firefight.

Nic held his SMG level despite the recoil and the simulated injuries frying his nerve endings. He kept his sights trained on a single target, an enemy proxybot’s head, until he got the popup he was gunning for.

NIC >SMG> LISE SCARLET: 1 | AZURE: 0

Automatic gunfire rattled all around him as he reloaded.

JAREK >SMG> CHRISSY SCARLET: 2 | AZURE: 0

“Man,” Jarek grunted, “is the pain always—?!”

SCARLET: 2 | AZURE: 1

Jarek died mid-sentence, and even though they were meters apart in the Simnasium, Nic could no longer hear his squadmate while he was waiting to respawn. The SimSuits were programmed to mute any audio that wasn’t allowed by the sim they were playing—or, in this case, by the Wargame. Nic could tell that Jarek must have been taken aback by the dialed-up pain settings as well.

SCARLET: 2 | AZURE: 2

Nic fired on another blue proxy and noticed, out of the corner of his HUD, that Maqsud was shooting the same one.

MAQSUD >SMG> VERONICA SCARLET: 3 | AZURE: 2 SCARLET: 3 | AZURE: 3

Nic barely had time to process what was happening or skim all of the notifications now materializing and fading faster than he could read them. He saw Perri pull the pin of a Frag Grenade and toss it before she met her demise.

SCARLET: 3 | AZURE: 4 PERRI >FRAG> EDITH SCARLET: 4 | AZURE: 4

Nic was killed switching to his Pistol.

MARTHA >SMG> NIC SCARLET: 4 | AZURE: 5

In the abject darkness between his first life and the next, Nic took a moment to breathe and reel from the exquisitely believable pain that was only just ebbing from his body. It felt like being stabbed all over, or a hundred scorpion stings—or so he imagined. That’s worse than anything I’ve felt in a long time, he thought.

He was no stranger to pain, mostly the odd bump or bruise in PE, but it was not a regular facet of his life, having lived in a highly protective environment from birth until a couple of weeks ago. This was the kind of pain that shocked him—the kind that hijacked his mind and put all other mental processes on a back burner while it was happening. It reminded him of the time he was sick and got sent to a surface medhab on Ayrus when he was young, or when he was even younger and got his chin scar playing King of the Hill. It was the kind of pain he would remember.

Or the kind he would have, under other circumstances. He had a feeling it wasn’t the last time he’d feel it.

He respawned into a new proxybot on a different part of the Gwher battlefield. They must scatter the modules to give us different spawn points, Nic thought. Spawn camping is harder that way. Just like the Final Exam. Rather than the astrosteel wall he’d seen at the start of the game, he was now positioned at the base of a hill that blocked his view of any other players. Checking his HUD, he saw hardly any time had passed at all, despite all the action they’d already seen.

29:28

“Nic, can you hear me?” Jarek asked.

“I’m here,” Nic replied. “Everyone else, report.”

“I’m back up,” said Max.

“Me, too,” Perri answered. No word from Shanti—it didn’t surprise him.

“RTIFIS,” said Nic, thinking on the fly. “Um... Display squad scoreboard.”

NIC [100%] 1|1 JAREK [100%] 1|1 PERRI [100%] 1|1 MAQSUD [100%] 1|1 SHANTI [100%] 0|1

Even if she’s silent, I’ll get another notification if Shanti dies again, he realized. And the score will change.

“What’s up with these pain settings, bro?” said Jarek. “This is way different from the Final. Any way you can change it?”

Nic nodded without thinking. “Good idea. RTIFIS, lower pain settings.”

said RTIFIS impassively.

“No good,” said Nic, accepting his agonizing fate. “Looks like this game is designed to hurt.”

“And guarantee a speedy termination for violating your contract,” Maqsud added jadedly.

“Why would they design it that way?” Perri asked.

Nic shook his head, again forgetting that no one could see him. “Doesn’t matter. We need to regroup. That was a good start, but we need to get control of this game. Establish a lead. If anybody has eyes on the enemy...”

RTIFIS said in Nic’s ear. The most proactive communication we’ve ever gotten from her, Nic mused.

“Perri, remind me what vehicle the Cyclops is,” he said, trying to smooth out the nerves in his voice.

“I told you guys we should have practiced vehicles more,” Perri replied bitterly. “Just saying.”

“Perri, just—”

“Heavily-armored ground vehicle with a single built-in rocket launcher at the nose. 10 rockets on board. Seating capacity of four. Max speed of 50km/h. Nothing gets through the hull but explosives, rockets, or maybe a sniper round. Do you see it?”

“No, but according to Shanti’s tag, it’s going to be on top of me in about 10 seconds. Unless it changes course for some reason.”

Just then, Nic heard Jarek grunt and then yell in the team chat, the sound of two back-to-back muffled explosions drowning out his sudden scream.

SCARLET: 4 | AZURE: 6

“Jarek!” Perri cried out. “Can anyone see what killed him? Why does RTIFIS only tag our own causes of death?”

“I think it’s quite obvious what did him in,” Max chimed in. “The real question is, where is it headed now?”

Nic heard a faint rumble growing steadily louder through his mechanical ears. “Oh...”

A beast of a vehicle crested the hill just above him. It was squat, sturdy, but still fast enough to run him down lethally. That was if the rockets didn’t get him first. Its engine hummed as it barreled down the incline straight for him.

He pulled the pins of both of his Grenades and braced for the impact.