The next morning, Mai was out and about early. Ignoring her body’s cry for more rest, and the shiver that shot through her body as she placed her feet onto the cold tiled floor of her room, she got straight up and started to work through yesterday’s reports.

One thing she hadn’t factored into being a leader was the amount of paperwork. Nor the notifications she received for the first fifty, then one hundred, then three hundred and finally five hundredth report filed. Even more annoying was that it hadn’t taken too long for her to achieve it.

In the end, she decided that she’d have the basic reports to her staffers to work through and approve, taking on only the more important ones. It didn’t seem as though it had put much of a dent in her inbox.

A chime sounded at her door. Flicking screens on her retinal monitor, she looked at the camera covering the outside of her door. Dakota and Biyu were standing outside. Somewhat jarringly, they were wearing body armour.

Keying the door release, she waited for them to enter.

“Ladies, how can I help you at this early hour?” she asked.

“Brought you some steamed buns,” Dakota produced a small package and handed it over to her. “Eat up, you’re going to need the bio-mass.”

Mai paused in the process of taking a bite.

“That sounds ominous, spit it out.”

“Jock’s been talking,” Biyu’s tone was grim, mouth down turned. “He hit the bottle after we went to bed. Hard. Started talking. People didn’t believe him at first, but he’s got a small cadre of followers, and they are utterly raging.”

Mai took a bite of the steamed bun, taking her time to chew as she tried to work out just how she could approach the issue.

“Is he still drunk?”

“No, sober as a judge now. The man can really drink,” Dakota took a bun from the package she’d given to Mai, stuffing it whole into her mouth. It wasn’t a particularly small one either.

Mai tried to swallow hers, but it felt like it had turned into a rock the way it went down. She pushed the rest of the buns away, appetite well and truly gone.

“Where are they now?”

“Over in the main canteen. They’re holding a meeting,” Dakota took another bun, her appetite clearly not affected by the morning’s events.

Mai walked slowly into the canteen after having taken a step back at the wall of sound which washed over her when the main door opened. Packed to the rafters with angry rebels, the canteen resembled a wasp’s nest more than anything else.

“They’ve been manipulating us! Playing us, screamed a lieutenant from the table top she was standing upon. We can’t trust anything they say to us!”

A roar greeted her words, drowning out anything that she might have been trying to say. Looking around, Mai could only spot non-players in the crowd. Every face was angry, eyes wide, flushed, fists clenched.

She stayed at the back of the room, scanning it to see if she could spot jock. He was nowhere to be seen, although with the number of rebels crowded into the room, it was like trying to spot a needle in a haystack.

Not wanting to cause more of a fuss than necessary, she quickly blink-clicked every face she could into the command centre database, sending a message to Biyu to check the faces against their roster.

Stepping slowly backward, she left the canteen, messaging Biyu that she needed to send someone she could trust to report on what was being discussed.

“Run!” A rebel sprinted past Mai as she made her way towards the command centre. Mai stepped back into the shadows of a building, activating her STEALTH and URBAN CAMOUFLAGE skills. The woman was on her own, head down and arms pumping as she raced into the distance. A group of other rebels charged past, screaming obscenities, and waving a myriad of weapons.

She was a player, those are locals.

Shots rang out from the direction that the player had run in.

“Dakota! They’ve started shooting, get all of the loyal players to the command centre now!”

“On it! How do we tell who’s loyal though?”

“If they’re not ranting and raving that we betrayed them, or trying to chase down players, they’re good enough for me!”

Dakota didn’t reply, but Mai listened in as she started to give orders to the ones she felt she could trust and ordering them to cascade those instructions to those they thought they could trust.

Mai sprinted off in the direction the player had run to. It didn’t take long for her to come across the body of the player. The killers were nowhere to be seen. Shots rang out further along the road, so she sprinted in that direction.

Backlit by the flames coming from one of the barracks, she spotted a group of rebels moving back and forth, shooting at the windows of the burning building. Sliding into cover behind a bullet-scarred ground vehicle, she called up the map of the base.

Bastards won’t undo everything I’ve worked so hard to build, she vowed. The burning building was one of the biggest barracks in the base and was therefore going to be the costliest to rebuild.

Thanks to the inaction of Yen Ching, the rebels had built up a massive store of control points, which meant she hadn’t had to worry too much about how much she spent when she remodelled the base.

Even now, with the size of the area that they controlled, they had a good daily income. It essentially boiled down to half a control point per square pace of land that they controlled. At roughly 4,047,000 square paces, that equalled 2,023,500 control points. On top of that they gained point two-five per cent per person living in that area. With just shy of ten thousand people all told, that meant another two thousand five hundred control points.

However, they then had to pay upkeep for every building they had. Each square pace of building that they had cost point seven-five per cent daily to upkeep. The more floors a building had, the greater the upkeep. Add weapons systems, power stations, and different costs for different buildings, the command centre for example cost one full control point per square pace, and was roughly one thousand square paces in size, and they were just about breaking even.

Looking at her control point bank, her heart sank as she saw that they only had twenty-thousand or so control points remaining. This hab block was three floors, each one thousand square paces. Three thousand square paces in total, for a cost of two thousand two hundred and fifty points to repair, plus another three hundred points because it is a hab block and those cost an additional point one per cent.

An explosion rocked the base off to the east, more flames rising into the air. Gun fire broke out in the same direction, and Mai heard Dakota giving terse orders.

Pushing all that to the side, Mai spent the control points to put the building out, another five hundred points, and then the remaining points to make the building as new.

A howl of outrage broke out from the crowd as they realised their former comrades were going to live.

“Get back to your barracks!” Mai used bio-mass to boost her voice, filling the air, causing the rebels to flinch at the volume.

“Those bastards have been using us. We thought that they were our friends, but all this time they were just mocking us!” a rebel, tears streaking her face, stalked towards Mai. She didn’t have any weapons, but Mai tensed, ready to form a shield if necessary. Desperate to avoid shedding the blood of any locals, she held out her hands.

“And we’re going to make the system pay for this!” She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was hard as smoke parched her throat. “We’re going to use them, we’re going to take this city, and then we’re going to go up and take the ten-mile.”

That gave the rebel pause for thought, but only for a split second as she then raised an accusing finger.

“You knew about this. You’ve been giving us missions to complete, holding them back for rebels and loyal players only. You’re no different to the players!”

Howls of anger drowned out Mai’s attempt to rebuff the rebel’s words. She held out her hands for quiet, not wanting to use her nano-voice again.

“I kept the secret because I wanted to get us into a place where we would be ready to take them on. To punish them. I kept the secret because I knew just how badly it affected me. I was trying to protect you from this for as long as possible.”

She met the rebel’s eyes, pleading with her to show that she understood. But all that met her gaze was anger.

“Burning down everything we’ve achieved won’t help. We’ve nearly removed all of the key players. We’re fast becoming one of the strongest factions in Nether City. If we work together, we make them pay!” She knew that she was repeating herself but couldn’t think of any other way to make her point. Revenge would only be possible if they worked together. But she understood why they didn’t agree with her. Everything they thought they knew about themselves had just been revealed to be a lie, a figment of some programmer’s imagination. Even now, could they be sure that they weren’t acting on the programmer’s wishes?

“How do you know that your reaction isn’t what the programmers want? How do you know that this isn’t some sort of new part of the story? Mega Minion and her people find out the truth of their true nature and fight the players and each other.”

That gave them pause, she could see the doubt in their eyes, and it made her sick. She’d just voiced her own fears and used them to manipulate her people.

“Please, work with me. Help me save the players. Help me get them on our side. I believe that the programmers want us to tear ourselves apart. They hate the fact I’m not doing what they want me to, and they’ll do anything they can to stop me. Help me.”