For the third time today, Marcos was surprised to be alive. Nakagawa was not so fortunate. A single bullet had entered above his right eye and exited out the back of his skull, splattering Marcos with blood. The body tumbled backward from the impact, but came to rest awkwardly erect against the cubicle wall, the hard-plate in the armor propping it up. Marcos wiped the viscera off his face with the back of one palm, put his hands in the air, then turned slowly around to face the shooter.

A gun rat pointed at Marcos, a wisp of smoke curling up from its deformed barrel. He approached it cautiously, mindful of the other murderous robots spaced around the room. None of them reacted in any way to his movement. Emboldened, Marcos crouched down next to the pint-sized assassin to investigate. A shiny metallic scar slashed across the front sensor package. At some point a bullet had grazed the bot and knocked out the antenna. Guess it didn't get the targeting update. Marcos ground it under the heal of his boot, savoring the crunch of cheap hardware. Sure, Nakagawa tried to kill him, but he'd been the closest thing to a friend Marcos had had this year.

He returned to the corpse and rifled through Nakagawa's belongings. He pocketed the USB drive that had almost cost him his life. Must be valuable if it was worth breach of contract. He also grabbed the transmitter for the gun rats - apparently not foolproof, but better than nothing. Nakagawa's other gear he judged too hot to touch. If he could purge whatever SumatoTek had done to his command implant there was still a chance he could drop off the map and ride out whatever the hell was going on.

For now he'd try turning off the modem in the thing. Nakagawa's little hack would probably ignore it, but hell, worth a shot. He mentally bid farewell to Ignatz, still holed up in the canteen. Maybe one of his troops would make it out of this mess, if anyone ever came for him. Blackmountain might be otherwise occupied; an urgent bulletin reported multiple terrorist attacks wiping out world capitals.

It'd been a while since Marcos had unplugged. They'd war-gamed it in the army of course, but it wasn't the kind of thing you did for fun. It felt like someone had just cut out a chunk of his brain - the constant drip of base sensor telemetry replaced by an awkward hole. Thankfully maps at least were was stored on device, so he wasn't totally blind.

Marcos stopped at the door and took a last look over the office, playing his light across the grizzly tableau. It wasn't much, but this grey block of a building had been the center of his life for the last three years. Incredible how much could change in the space of a few hours.

The headlamp flicked off as he poked his head out for a look around. Still no movement he could see, just a few downed soldiers and a whole lot of gun-rats. Time to get away from this death trap, back to the cover of jungle. Hopefully before anyone came looking for survivors.

He frowned at the pair of bikes parked out front; looking closely he could make out the twin tread marks leading in from the jungle. Leaving the extra bike would raise questions, might even tip one of the insurgents off to check for tracks. He wheeled the extra one into the building and added it to the pile of junk, then closed the door for good behind him.

As he was mounting his own bike he caught a flicker of movement from two buildings down, the canteen. Someone had just cracked the door.

"Marcos! Marcos, you're alive. And the gun rats are down! I'm coming to you."

"Iggy no!"

Too late. Ignatz had already thrown the door wide. From his vantage Marcos could see a cluster of bots re-orient themselves, dropping onto their haunches to stabilize the shot. A look of confusion played across Ignatz's face as he registered their motion. He threw an accusing look at Marcos, opened his mouth as if to yell. The staccato reports of the gun rats cut him short, he collapsed in a spray of blood.

"Damn." Marcos didn't need a readout to tell Ignatz was dead. Sloppy. Even the greenest recruit knows not to open the door to a bot swarm. Still, he couldn't fault him, what with everyone else dead and his CO wandering around out in the open.

Marcos shook his head with a grimace and pressed on. He turned the bike in a broad arc and walked it into the jungle, one hand on the throttle for the electric assist. With luck the shallow tire tracks would go unnoticed. Safely back in the jungle he mounted the bike and turned the throttle carefully. If any gun rats were out here he wanted to give Nakagawa's transmitter time to work its magic.

He pushed another 50 feet back into the trees, then stopped to consider his next move. How many insurgents were out here with him? It could be anywhere from a half-dozen to a full battalion. Evidence so far pointed to a small operation, maybe a half dozen mortar operators and a pair of bot handlers. If he stayed off the roads he stood a decent chance of slipping away undetected. After that, the picture was murkier. Myanmar was hostile to foreigners who strayed from their enclaves, and the generals in power were more likely to lock him up than send him home.

He saw two options - continue on to the Chinese military base and hope he could cut a deal for passage out, or bike his way to Thailand where the dictator was a little more friendly to westerners. Progress overland would be difficult, there were regular military checkpoints on all the major roads. Marcos hadn't cultivated any relationships with any of the rebel groups; they'd be more likely to view him as a lucrative ransom source than as an ally. And they'd be right; Blackmountain had already put a bounty on his head, in all likelihood SumatoTek would do the same.

In the end that's what tipped it - China and Japan were no friends, he might be able to play the CCP against the state-backed Japanese conglomerate for a path to freedom. A long shot, but he had to try something.

The map showed a game trail that cut due west from his current location. He pushed through some low brush, found the trail and took it slow, more concerned with stealth than speed. He could circle around the base this way, hopefully avoiding the insurgents that had killed the commander's troops. The trail eventually joined a dirt path that would take him all the way to the Chinese outpost. Marcos wasn't crazy about being in the open, but if he gunned it he would only be exposed for a couple of minutes.

He was still working through the details of his pitch to the CCP when he turned a blind corner and almost ran over a camouflaged local taking a smoke break. An oddly shaped backpack was slung off one shoulder. The stranger spun around at the sound of the bike's tires, aiming a well-worn Glock with his left hand. Marcos came to an abrupt stop about a foot away, pistol already drawn, round chambered. Neither man moved.