Leaving Kaylee disarmed and bleeding in the hallway, I continued into the bunker. The whole complex had become hushed in the absence of gunfire and shouting, and I found myself focusing on my crunching footsteps as I ground the dust and little bits of spalled shrapnel and dust into the rough concrete floor.

My first stop was at the corner of the main hallway, having now cleared the rooms to either side of it. One of the guys I had shot lay there at the corner. He was the one who had caught me off guard, and was slain by my blind fire as I hit the deck. I’d noticed that I dropped him with a lucky shot to the head, but had not seen just how devastating that shot had been.

Most of the back of his head was just gone, leaving a bloody and cracked portion of his face while the rest of his head was splattered all around him. I quickly looked away, after feeling my stomach flip upside down, to try to escape at the sight. I stepped over him and made my way to the door at the end of the hall where the other guy had popped out at the start of the fight.

The room back there looked like a small armory, packed with crates and weapon racks loaded up with the old military surplus rifles that the rebels favored. There was a half-played game of solitaire blown around on a folding table, only barely recognizable as the game after the blast from the explosion had scattered most of the cards.

I quickly moved on, closing the door behind myself and snapping off the handle with a grunt of effort. I made my way back around the nearly headless man, again avoiding looking at him, on my way to the final few doors around the corner of the L shaped hallway. This was the only fully closed door I had come across so far, with all of the rest of them having been blasted open by the overpressure from the nearby grenade. Somehow this last hollow-steel door, something more suited as an exterior entry to a commercial grade building, had resisted the explosion.

I glanced around, noticing that the wire-frame wall hacks were no longer showing anyone. “No cameras on the other side here?” I whispered to Max.

“Nope, I can’t detect anything in there, but I suspect they might have another Link rig and an Impex by the presence of some trace elements that like to sneak alongside things that are pushed through.”

An Impex? Maybe it would be worth it to Link up real quick to grab some supplies and some of the stuff I kept in my bank vault in the Hub. The Link rig in the van would allow me to Link in and get back to the trials if we could escape the army chasing after us, but without an Impex I would be unable to bring anything into, or out of, the virtual world. I’d have to rely on whatever we could get from the real world until I managed to find a solution to that.

I frowned, knowing that I probably didn’t have the time to mess around with that. My friends were waiting outside for me. While I did not trust Jorn, I trusted his word on his ten minute warning. I couldn’t spend any more time down here than I absolutely needed to. Linking up and going through the queue to use the in-game Impex would take too long.

“How should I go in?” I asked, unsure what would be the best way to proceed now that my surprise was blown and my x-ray vision had run out.

“You think I’m some breach and clear expert now? You left all of them back in the van. I told you that you should have brought someone with some actual experience. I could get Ali or Jorn on comms probably, if you really want someone to hold your hand.”

“Forget it.” I replied. He seemed to be slipping back into his usual unhelpful and mocking self now that the bulk of the ‘fun’ was over. I was on my own, and was too keyed up to spend much time thinking about it.

I kicked the door in, this time slamming my booted foot into it as hard as I could with zero regard to stealth. I had a flash of memory of the last time I tried to kick a door like this in, when the highway had been attacked and Tevin and I had to run for our lives while the hijackers had warred with the Shepherds in the city. Only about a month ago, I nearly broke my ankle and got nothing but pain for my effort. This time was different.

The door popped open, ripping part of the frame out of the wall where the deadbolt had been and sending it flying. I stepped through with my rifle up and stopped the door from rebounding with my foot and quickly learned why the room was quiet.

There were two people in here, one was an older man with unkempt shaggy hair and a bushy beard. Lit up by the spotlight attached to my rifle, he was crouching behind the cover of an overturned table and holding an old .45 pistol to the head of a tear streaked and black-eyed young woman. I had finally found the last of the four tower traitors, and this one was being held hostage.

“Stop!” The man yelled out, pulling his face back behind Raschel’s shoulder and peeking out with a single glaring eye. “This girl’s not one of ours, and I’ve got no problem blowing her innocent face onto the floor!”

Without lowering my rifle, I took another step into the room. The look on Rachel's face as she squinted against the bright light was enough to give me pause, especially with Kaylee’s comment about her earlier. I was almost ready to believe that Raschel might have truly not been a part of the plot and was only caught up in this mess as some kind of social cover, almost. That still wasn't going to stop me.

“Like you can prove that, asshole.” I replied, startling myself with how calm my voice came out.

“Oh my god, Nick!? Please, these people are fucking crazy!” Raschel cried out when she heard my voice. She struggled a little against the guy, who roughly jerked her back in place by her hands bound behind her back.

I kept my rifle trained on them, trying to get a bead on the guy's head as he peeked out from behind her. My hands were shaky, trembling with each hammering thump of my heart, and I couldn’t maintain a steady aim. I was torn, lighting them up and being done with this whole situation was the easy and clear answer, but the outside chance of Raschel actually being an innocent victim of all of this gave me pause. Not enough to back down, but enough to force me to think about it.

Right as I was about to yell back again, something angry and provoking that I really didn’t think through before opening my mouth, the rifle jerked and fired all on its own.

Raschel screamed and fell to the side, turning and landing on her chest and cracking her face against the hard floor. The guy simply fell back, his head now resembling the guy outside in the hallway, meaning it was mostly missing after the 11 gram projectile ripped through his forehead at more than 800 meters per second.

“Woo! Boom, headshot! This rifle is kind of awesome, we should get one of our own. Now, before you get all mad, I could already see it, you were going to let that guy convince you she was innocent. Then you would have lost your nerve and come blubbering to me with conflicted and self-absorbed thoughts to solve your problem anyways. You barely have any time before Jorn’s limit runs out, and we don’t have time for any of your indecisive faffing about, we need to wrap this up.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I blinked in shock, moreso that Max had just shot the guy than his latest insult, which I had accepted as just an unavoidable fact of my current reality.

Plus, he had a point. We were out of time, and I had stalled out. I took a quick glance around the room as I approached the groaning woman, spotting the portable Link that Max had guessed would be there. I also noticed some more small arms, as well as a few papers scattered amongst a liberal coating of trash. This room looked like it had been occupied by a shut-in for months by the amount of discarded food wrappers and drink bottles that lay strewn and piled up around the area.

I focused away from the scene of violence behind the overturned table and on the papers on a table next to the Link. I needed any information I could get on these bastards, so I began stuffing anything that didn’t look like trash into whatever pockets they would fit into. I made myself ignore Raschel as she cried and groaned in pain on the floor, too dazed by her fall to speak in real words for now. After a frantic 20 seconds of ransacking the room, I finally heard Raschel say something coherent.

“Help me.” She pleaded, her voice low and nasally from a freshly broken nose. “Nick? How did you…”

Max’s calmed voice interrupted her. “You need to ignore her, man. Now’s not the time for your human feelings and guilt.”

I finished quickly tossing the rest of the room as I listened, grabbing a bunch of papers, notebooks, and a couple of little data drives. I saved the hard part for last. I’d managed to avoid looking at the latest man I’d killed, or the woman I couldn’t decide what to do with. With a sigh I turned to them and knelt down next to the nearly headless man, keeping my rifle in one heavy and numb hand, while I did my best to search through his pockets.

I spared a glance over at Raschel as I searched, wondering why she had gone quiet. She was looking at me with a mix of confusion and desperation, mouthing almost angry looking words at me from where she lay on the floor. When I looked up and we caught eyes, she mouthed something and gave me a questioning look. She paused for a moment before mouthing the same thing again when I didn’t answer.

I went back to what I was doing, rifling through the guys pockets for more paper, or anything that might hold value or information. While I worked with my one free hand, pulling out a wallet and a set of keys, I directed a thought towards Max.

‘Max, what's going on with her, did you mute her or something?’

“Isn't that obvious? Yes, of course. I knew if you had to listen to her, you’d end up wanting to swoop in and save her. I’ve noticed a pattern in your brain waves after that thing with Dalls and Ali, you got a taste of being a savior. You're going to get addicted and drag us into way more side-questy bullshit if I let it continue. You couldn’t even bring yourself to finish off Kaylee back there, and she admitted everything! This one’s been proclaiming her innocence, and very directly targeting your compassionate side, no chance you can handle that, it's better that you just don't hear it.”

“Fuckin’-A, man.” I breathed out, causing Raschel to stop mouthing words and give me a strange look. I continued my reply to Max internally, forming my angry thoughts and shoving them at his corner of my mind.

‘You can’t just turn off my perception like that, Max. I’m sick of the manipulation and lies, of being controlled and whipped around. I need some autonomy, and to be kept in the damned loop, buttface.’

I tossed in the childish insult as a sign that I was willing to delve down to his level on this one if he pushed the issue. I really was sick of being a pawn, of being pushed and pulled in every direction at once without a choice of my own, of being kept in the dark and unaware of the complex web of fuckery that tangled the path before me at every turn.

Have you ever walked face first into an occupied spider-web in the dark? There’s that brief moment of confusion at first, what was that? And then you feel it, the thin webbing stuck all over your face, and now your hands, and is that something moving? Something scurrying on fast, pointy, little legs across your forehead?

My life had been entirely filled with stressy little moments like that. Before Max had even shown up, I had been kow-toeing a clearly lined box that the administrative machine of Arktria had laid out for me.

A machine that pushed people to their limit. Tevin fought for them directly, engaging in near daily battles for years, only pausing when he was injured enough to be forced to rest. Rin, who held 24 hours of responsibility and barely slept or spent a moment off the clock. Or Ali, who had resolutely accepted a fate as equally if not more exploitative than the others. Your life, your time, your mind and body. They wanted it all.

While I directed my thoughts to Max, I felt the roiling mass of anger I had been building change. Like it crystalized and hardened, turning from a hasty red-faced violent feeling to something sturdier, more resolved, determined. I was done with being a pawn. I would help Max change the system like he wanted, but not as a pawn, and try my best at making the reality of his wild plans something that would be better for the people on the dirt-side of reality.

“Jeeze, dude, you could have just, like, said to let me hear her. No need to get all grim and sanctimonious on me like that.”

“-hear me! What is wrong with you?! Nick!” Raschel’s voice turned back on mid-scream, causing me to flinch and look back at her.

I was so startled by the sudden screaming that I nearly fell back and away from her, causing me to bring my rifle up as I held my balance, and for her to wince away and quiet down as it waved in her direction. I frowned and righted myself, making sure to point the rifle away so it couldn’t just go off at Max’s command again.

I held her gaze, both of us frozen in place. I could see she had been knocked around pretty good. She had a black eye and a broken nose, and her face held more desperation and fear than I had ever seen on a person.

‘Max, can you do anything like… reading people's reactions and seeing if they are telling the truth?’ I mused.

“You want me, the most evolved and singularly greatest mind and machine this side of the core, to be your lie detector?” He paused, taking in a deep and dramatic breath.

“Sure, why not. It’s all measurements, statistics, and readouts that you humans have loved to study and talk about for decades. It’s so easy a monkey with a souped-up toaster can do it, I can do it no problem.”

I restrained the grin his answer brought, and kept direct eye contact with Raschel. “Did you know about the plan to lure us here? That your friends were some kind of underground cell bent on capturing me?”

She gave me a mixed look that to me looked honest, and shook her head as she replied. “No! I swear I didn’t know any of this, I just met them a few months ago and there's not really too many people our age in the tower, so you know…” her answer lost a bit of steam and she finally looked away. “Sometimes you make friends with who’s around you, because you have to be around them, right?”

Max? I thought.

“You know I could lie to you, right? How can you believe me, or her? What is truth anyway? Right or wrong, we can't afford tag-alongs, Nick!”

I narrowed my eyes and looked away as well. ‘Max, that would be a really shitty thing to do to the only person, or thing, even remotely close to a friend that you have.’

“Fine, fine. Ugh. There’s a solid chance she’s telling the truth, although I don’t have enough data. I only reviewed 300ish hours of footage of her from the tower's database, so my baseline sample set is not large enough to be 100% positive.”

I allowed the grin to actually make it to my face and rose shakily to my feet. That was good enough for me, for now anyway.

“Can you stand, walk?” I asked her.

She nodded and shifted around, and then athletically rolled herself up to her feet and managed to stand with her still bound hands now in front of her.

“Good, you’re going to have to stay bound and disarmed, plus answer every damn question we ask, but you can come with us if you want. Or, you could wait around for whoever shows up first, the army or the mob, your call.”

Without waiting for an answer, I stepped around the violent scene in the middle of the room and hurried to catch my ride. Max helpfully popped up a timer labeled “Time until Jorn and Ali kill each other”, that was running into the negative and had ended most of a minute ago.