We lost. I died. At least I didn’t go out like Carl. Poor guy was basically turned to pulp on the side of a shipping container. Not a pleasant way to get your candle snuffed.

Everyone was returned to the preparation room—being unconscious, I didn’t get to see how—to shed our gear and lick our wounds. Interestingly, our ‘wounds’ were only mental and emotional. Any damage sustained during the training was gone. Rifle Guy’s head was back to normal, and Carl was alive.

In a somber procession, we all filed back to the classroom where Zhenya was patiently waiting. The screen showed stats and clips from the battle, complete with a still frame of the big Medic injecting lethal nanites into my guts for the win. It was humiliating, though well earned, I supposed.

When everyone was seated and the clamor of congratulations died down, the instructor enlarged the stat display. “Team A, four kills. Not a bad performance despite the loss.” He looked right to me. “An acceptable display of healing as well. You got your teammate back in the fight, and that resulted in a kill. You are credited with an assist for the effort.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a little better about the crushing defeat.

My experience ticked up another one.

Zhenya shook his head. “Staying behind was the incorrect decision. Medics are extremely useful and should not be wasted. While you were hiding, your team was picked off one by one and left to die. Not smart.”

Well, the warm fuzzy feeling was nice while it lasted.

“Still, your evasive pattern right before your death was commendable.” Zhenya clicked a button, and the clip of my demise played for everyone to see. As it turned out, I zigzagged back and forth when I ran, and I essentially dodged a dozen rounds from a short barrel rifle in the hands of another attacker. I didn’t really remember it that way, but oh well.

Next, Zhenya pulled up a clip from the roof that showed Carrie attempting to hack an electronic control panel. After a minute of agonizing silence, the panel sparked and Carrie threw up her hands. “Your failure to gain access to the security panel was expected. Your odds of success, based on your level and abilities, were only twelve percent. The fact that you tried is the important part. That was the correct decision.”

The review went on for two full hours. Zhenya broke down every single person’s actions and inactions, offering brutal criticisms and glowing praise. Carl was the worst. He got a severe tongue lashing, and I had to agree with the professor that it was warranted. Not only did he drop his gun and give away our position, he failed to even try to use his class.

Zhenya pulled up an interior view of the container we were supposed to protect. It was lined with shelves full of alien specimens and dangerous looking chemicals. “As a Xenobiologist, you would have quickly recognized several of these components and been able to craft a bomb with the help of Noah, your team’s Pilot. His technological savvy perk would have proven useful. Without a proper Nanotechnician, your odds of success would not have been perfect, but it is the attempt that matters. You did not try, and that is your failure.”

Carl hung his head in shame.

By the time the review session was over, everyone was hungry. Our team sat together in the cafeteria, and no one felt very keen on talking. Finally, waiting for my food to be constituted somewhere beneath the floor and delivered via robot, I figured someone had to take charge.

“Hey, we should probably figure out what everyone is good at. Maybe plan a little strategy. I didn’t really like getting my ass kicked in there.”

“Says the lady with a spoon,” Rifle Guy scoffed.

I glared at him, but I don’t think it did any good. He had a point, after all. I couldn’t even pick up his gun by the handle because of my stupid flaw.

I took a deep breath and refocused. “Yeah, I know I’m not going to be the strongest link. That’s why we need to figure out who is the strongest link. And hey, I’m pretty sure that if we suck here, we get kicked out. Like ass on the street, homeless on an alien planet kind of kicked out. I don’t want that. So… everyone in?”

General murmurs of agreement were all I got back, but I took it. That would have to be enough for now.

“Great. Let’s just go around like its day one at community college. Introduce yourself, tell us your class and all that jazz. And maybe a few sentences about what you’re good at. I’ll start. My name is Stephanie Loffel. Today is day two for me. This place is awesome, but I also kind of hate it at the same time. Anyway, I’m your Medic, and I fucked up and got a spoon as my weapon. I really don’t like fighting very much, so that’s why I chose Medic. I was a nurse back on Earth. Well, studying to be a nurse. Ok, you’re next.”

I pointed to Rifle Guy.

Reluctantly, Rifle Guy got to his feet. He took a drink of Anchor-6’s version of diet coke and cleared his throat. “Hey guys. I’m Erik. I was ROTC back home and studying economics. I like to hit the gym. Pretty standard stuff. I went Space Marine. Seemed like the obvious choice for me. Oh, and I was on a date with a super hot chick when the goon squad picked me up. Figured that was relevant.”

“It wasn’t, but thank you for sharing,” I added.

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Carl was next. He stood and brushed some crumbs from his shirt. “Hey. I’m Carl. I was a chemist at Stanford before, so I picked Xenobiologist here. I’m having a great time so far, honestly. I don’t really care that we lost today. I really just want to study the aliens out there. I always knew there were aliens. Actually, cool story, my cousin was abducted when we were—”

“Sit down, Carl,” Carrie interjected. “No one cares about your tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.”

“Well, actually… we know aliens exist now, so not really a conspiracy, right?” I said.

Carl seemed to appreciate the support.

Carrie just scoffed and took it as her que to go next. “I’m a Netrunner. Basically a hacker, but I suck at it right now. And, uh, I drove an ice cream truck in Deland, Florida before this. I gotta say, I think the League is a better place than Florida. At least my room has working AC.”

We went down the line until everyone had been introduced. We had four dedicated combat classes like Rifle Guy—I already forgot his name—so it made the most sense to split our team into two groups of four, each with a pair of soldiers, and then depending on the mission, I could move between the two mini groups.

Our team was so far only called Team A, and that fit us just fine. We named the mini groups Surf and Turf because one of the soldiers, a big burly lumberjack kind of guy named Shane, was eating a triple helping of steak and lobster. If my beloved mozzarella sticks and Coors Banquet were a little below average, I couldn’t imagine what his meal tasted like.

Team Surf had my only friends so far. Carrie and Carl would serve as the more science-minded and brainy members, and Rifle Guy alongside an Asian woman named Choo would be the muscle. Choo was a Scout who used EMP grenades—infinitely cool. She was also a ballerina and could fit in a bunch of super tight spaces. I hoped I was there to witness her popping out of an air duct to drop a grenade on someone.

Team Turf’s soldiers were Shane, a Mutant with a plasma flamethrower, and a very creepy African man who had to be sixty years old. His accent was thick, but he spoke enough English for us to understand him, though he had to repeat a lot of things. He was a Cultist which seemed about as useful as my spoon, but his tesla staff was pretty damn nifty.

For non-combat roles on Team Turf, we had the only people I had met so far who knew each other back on Earth. They were twins, male and female, from Denmark. One was a Pilot, and the other a Planetologist. Again, not the most useful classes given our first dose of combat, but I was confident that they would play crucial roles later.

Once we all finished dinner and Shane put the screws to his sixth helping of nano-constructed steak and lobster, a few of us went to the fitness center. It was abundantly obvious that I wasn’t physically strong enough to survive, and Carl was practically made of twigs. Rifle Guy, basically a Greek letter tattoo away from being the most stereotypical frat bro ever conceived, showed us the ropes and helped make up a workout plan. The weights were all the same—weights are weights—but a few of the machines were just a bit quirky. Regardless of the minor differences, they would get the job done over time. And Rifle Guy had been here for a bit, constantly hitting the gym, and he reported a few points gained in his physical trait. It seemed that the numerical value was directly tied to his core strength and endurance. It wasn’t the only factor, of course, but it played a major role. If he got an arm blown off but his physical stat was twenty, he’d still be crippled. The stat couldn’t overcome real ailments like injury or tiredness.

In the same way, all the stats were essentially maximums or potentials. Knowledge was, of course, a measure of retained facts, but someone with low knowledge could still beat a high knowledge person at trivia under the right circumstances. Intoxication, tiredness, distractions, and all sorts of other things influenced the outcome.

It turned out that Rifle Guy also knew what the ‘glamor’ stat meant. It was essentially a catch-all of charisma attributes. Charm, seduction, influence, conversation—anything you would need at a high-profile soiree in a James Bond movie essentially fell under the umbrella of glamor.

When the three of us were sufficiently sweaty and exhausted, it was finally time for sleep. Likely a product of design, everyone in our cadre of eighteen had apartments in the same general area of floor five. It was nice having friends nearby, even if I didn’t really know anyone that well.

Laying in my comfy bed, I tried to make sense of everything that had happened. As Crunch explained, I would probably be stuck in the philosophical conundrum of it all for a few weeks. Even though I was never into that kind of stuff before, I knew Crunch was right. What the hell was I doing? Enough time had passed where I knew I wasn’t dreaming or drugged or anything.

Maybe I was dead.

None of the religions I had ever heard of proclaimed an alien world with a brutal death game as the afterlife, but that didn’t rule it out, right? I had no idea.

Honestly, I missed my real friends. Sure, we all had our flaws, but who didn’t? No matter what shit I was going through or how broke Chase was, he always came through when I needed him. And Taylor was one of the nicest guys I had ever met. Super successful in basically everything he ever touched, and that had a tendency to drive me nuts sometimes, but he was genuinely a good guy. Julia was alright too. We didn’t always agree or even really get along, but we were friends. And Doug. I didn’t know him beyond the bar, and that made me sad. I should have.

Not having ready access to my friends made me suddenly wish I had spent more time with them. I wondered what they were doing back on Earth. Was there an investigation? I had to assume the cops would figure out that I was kidnapped. My door was smashed in, my phone was still there, the couch was a mess, and I was missing.

When I didn’t show up for work tomorrow, I’d get fired. Two days of no-show, no-call was the limit. Tomorrow was day two. Oh well. According to Crunch, I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to.

If I ever figured out how, I’d try to get Chase recruited to The Hanseatic League. He’d probably love it here. No more job applications, unlimited booze, and everything was structured like the tabletop RPGs he loved so much and was always trying to get us to play. I remembered the last time he asked to run a Dungeons and Dragons one-shot, whatever that was, and I turned him down. I ended up making up some lame excuse about needing to be around to video chat with my parents in France just to get out of it. God, I was a shitty friend.

And my parents. How long before someone told them? I’d known Taylor the longest, but I don’t think even he had met them. They’d only been back to the United States a few times in the last decade, anyway. Once the police got involved, they’d figure out how to track down my parents and let them know. Would they fly back to Michigan and join the search? Wear a rain poncho and hold a flashlight, searching through woods like an episode of Forensic Files? I doubted it.

The floodgates opened. Thinking about my friends and my parents was too much. I missed them. I missed them all. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.