I sat in the back room at Mama Grace's, eating my first good meal all day. Maybe longer than that. I remembered having breakfast this morning.

This morning had been a week ago.

Hester, Will, and Chavez were with me. Arjun and Juana had joined us as well. We noshed tiredly on some fresh corn muffins while Juana was in the kitchen waiting for our entrees to be ready. I'd seen that the other guys got a good meal and then off to clean up and relax. Most of them had made it through the mission without dying. So it had been a hard week of activity for them.

"I can't believe you got to skip over all of that damn annoying jump puzzle stuff," Chavez commented as he ate. "I should have tried dying.”

“You remember how Johnson died two days in, and we spent 15 hours getting back to where we had been?" Hester asked.

Chavez looked down at his food and shut up.

"I'm going to need a full debrief," I told Arjun.

"I'm working on a highlights video for you now, sir," he said.

Juana came in. She was carrying a tray piled high with freshly cooked steak and grilled corn on the cob. She set it down on the table, and I reached for a plate.

Then I looked up at her. Her expression was neutral, but I could see the worry lines around her eyes, and I knew she was going to have something to say to me later. I sighed, grabbed the food, and dug in.

Will turned to me. “Shad, I'm going to be completely honest with you. That mission took three times as long as it should have. The recruits are enthusiastic and eager, but they don't know what the hell they're doing."

"Hey," Chavez said, a piece of steak halfway to his mouth, "what the hell, man? My guys are the best."

"You're great soldiers," Will said, "but, well, you're not gamers."

"The hell we're not," Chavez said. "We all passed the tests and won the tournaments to get this assignment "

"Wait, what?" Hester asked.

I sighed. "We've got a lot of very willing volunteers from most of Earth's militaries. Back home they are running all volunteers through a serious of trials, mostly popular games. They are only sending out the best.

"And we are the best," Chavez insisted.

"At what, Candy Crush?" Hester asked, rolling her eyes.

"Hester," I said warningly, but she shook her head.

"No, Shad, you're gonna listen to me because I am not in your stupid chain of command, and I don't have to respect it. And to be completely honest, you need me more than I need you right now. Will and I are the only competent people on your team, and we just spent eight days of boring, miserable hell that should have been four at most, and was at risk of being twice that because this twerp has to go by the book according to completely outdated and useless military doctrine."

She took a deep breath and kept on. "These missions aren't like anything you've done before," she told Chavez. "You've got to get that through your head.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Discipline and training will get us where we need to be," he said. "You need to be more of a team player."

I held up my hand. "Enough!" A hush fell over the table. I took a deep breath. "Look, both of you need to stop. I can't remember most of what happened. I need to review tapes, see where we can learn. This is not helpful. We won, all right?"

"Sure," Hester stood up. She picked up her plate. "Will, come on. Let's get home. If they didn’t give it away to some bum in the last week.” She stomped out. Will looked after her, then stood up, grabbed another ear of corn off the serving tray, and added it to his plate, and followed her.

“I’m going to get back to my work,” Arjun said, not looking us in the face. He hated confrontation. I nodded and he left.

Juana sat down next to me as Chavez began shoveling food into his mouth as fast as he could. A minute later, he stood up as well.

"Gonna get back to the barracks now, sir," he said all in a rush. "Permission to be excused?"

"Granted," I said wearily. He rushed out, leaving Juana and me alone.

"Where's Grandpa?" I asked, looking around.

"He..." Juana hesitated. "He left for Earth three days ago."

"Oh, right. Time loss." I sighed and put my hand to my forehead. "This is going to take some getting used to."

"I don't like it," she said. She set her hand on my arm. "I don't like how long that mission took. It was wearing on your whole team. I know Hester was being insubordinate just now, but I've watched the last eight days, and when you see what happened, you'll understand. She's right. These men may have played some games, but they aren’t gamers the way you need them to be.."

"I know," I said. “I thought maybe I could train them up on the fly, but I'm realizing now these missions are terrible for us actually learning anything. If someone dies, they forget everything that happened. Even if I go back and review the videos, it's not like having been there. It's not memories. It's just something that happened to someone else." I could hear my voice rising, Juana's grip tightened on my arm.

"I lost eight days. Even if they were boring, that's part of my life, gone forever. Am I...?" I took a deep breath, shook my head. "Am I even the same guy that got killed in there?"

Juana's hand was so tight on my arm, her fingers were like claws.

"Shad," she said intently, "yes, you are the same man. You've used weird mechanics before. Come on. You're the guy who once ate a grenade just so he could get back to his ship faster. You're not weirded out by death and respawning. This is no different. You just lost a few memories."

It sounded to me like she was trying to convince herself, too. I turned to her. Her dark eyes met mine, full of worry and fear. "So what are you going to do now?"

I sighed. "I'm going to go get a good night's sleep and then I'm going to sit down with Arjun and review those tapes. And then, after she's had time to cool down, I'm going to talk with Hester because I'm worried that I'm going to lose her and Will. They didn't sound happy about this. I'm not going to be able to do these missions without them, or someone like them. How did my new recruits do, by the way?"

Juana frowned. "Well, the cat lady died twice and then she went back into the zone and immediately left. Said her cats had told her she was running out of lives and she needed to go somewhere else."

"For real?" I said, incredulously.

Juana nodded. "Yeah, it was pretty weird. The other two you can watch. They did pretty well on the versus ship bit there at the end, I thought."

"Okay," I said.

"But you're not wrong, Shad. These people are willing. They just aren't able. That mission would have been easier for you with three allies who knew what they were doing. Maybe five. There were some really nasty bits down in the sewer where you needed the firepower. I think you and your grandfather and Sage could have cleaned that up in two days if it had been just you three."

"Maybe I should take Sage along next time."

"Don't you dare," Juana told me. "She's finally starting to have a social life of her own, friends, something outside of constant combat. It's good for her."

"I know. I won’t tell her how much I need her.” I checked my special tab. Kronos had credited me with another huge lot of ethereum, three times as much as the first. "Now, do we want to talk about the ethereum budget tonight, or—"

"No," Juana said. "I'm waiting for you to finish your steak so we can go home and cuddle. I've got the latest news and entertainment package up from Earth that I've been waiting for you to get out so we could watch. It’s been a long day for you, but it’s been a long week for me and I deserve a night off with my husband.”

“I can’t beat that.” I finished my steak in two bites. We swung by the kitchen for a plate of brownies, then back home.