The training center was set up much like the portal chamber. Through the main entrance, the four of us filed into a staging area that looked like a locker room from any generic cop show, touched our hands to our lockers, and geared up using the inventory UI.

Closing out the screen, I peered out from under my helmet at a partner who clearly didn’t have friends handing out higher-level drops. Blackrune’s full set of newb gear — including the standard-issue assault rifle — didn’t inspire confidence.

Then again, I had seen him kill someone with that rifle. It was an accident, sure, but evidence enough that he knew how to put a lethal bullet into a target.

Jim and Tony were, of course, wearing their latest and greatest — the body armor and weapons that had replaced the hand-me-downs they’d lavished on me. I hadn’t picked up enough specs in Meta Mercs to know exactly what I was looking at, but appearances made it clear that both of them decided to go with precision rifles of some kind. Long barrels, big scopes, small magazines.

Yeah, they were convinced killing us would be like plinking away at metal duckies in a carnival game.

“All set?” Jim asked with a concerning level of eagerness in his voice. He also didn’t wait for either Blackrune or me to answer. “We go in first. When the doorway changes color, you go in and pop up in the attacking team’s spawn point.”

I cocked my head. “I assume you know exactly where that is, right?”

“Actually, there’s three,” Tony said. “You can pick which one you spawn at. But we set it up so you can’t change it when you die, so pick a good one.”

Jim was already stepping through the blue, glowing doorway that marked the entrance to the instanced PvP arena. And that’s what it was, despite being part of the training center. Just a glorified deathmatch map.

He stepped through, and Tony followed after giving me and my partner a solemn nod. As soon as his bootheel disappeared into the blue rectangle, the entire door color-shifted. The calm, welcoming entrance was now an angry warning light.

“That’s us,” I said, trying to look resolute as I strode toward the menacing, red glow.

Blackrune slapped his hand against my sleeve. “Hold up. We have to be smart about this.”

“Too late.”

“Not at all,” he continued, completely sidestepping my sarcasm. “They took sniper rifles.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I guess Jim wanted to see our faces better when he picks us off like idiots.”

“Tropic Heat is like…a tower defense map. The capture point is inside a camp with two guard towers. With one man in each tower, they get sightlines all around the camp.”

“You said it was a jungle.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“It is, but the approach is all flat and open. For like two hundred meters in every direction.”

That explained their weapon selection. Considering their time spent in-game, and their high ground advantage, picking us off would be easy. Maybe Jim was right, and strolling up ten times to catch our bullets would be the best solution.

“So, how the hell do we play that smart?” I asked.

“First of all, we know where they’re going to be. One man in each tower.”

I nodded. “That’s the only way they’d be sure to see us, right?”

“Right! Already, that tells us they’re split up,” Blackrune said, his expression showing more determination with every word. It was like watching a tangerine turn into a cannonball. “And I’m guessing they don’t know there are secret entrances to the camp.”

Now I was grinning, too. “Or they don’t expect us to know. Hell, they know me pretty well, and I wouldn’t know that unless they told me.”

“Oh, I know,” Blackrune said. “I had months to study this game before I could afford the hardware.”

Hm. I might have met the one person who’d spent more time reading guides than Jim. And that was an education that could actually prove useful during this sadistic joke of an initiation.

“Tight,” I said, slapping him on the back. “You lead the way.”

***

I stuck close behind Blackrune, keeping my head down as much to avoid branches and giant mosquitoes as to avoid bullets. Not that anyone was shooting at us — yet — but the foliage was so dense, it seemed like Jim or Tony could be waiting right around every broad-leafed bush.

My partner looked at me over his shoulder. “There isn’t much of a trail here, so a lot of new players miss this.”

Good thing I was with a new player who memorized maps and knew exactly which spawn point to pick when we stepped through the angry red door.

“We push through this a ways,” he continued, “then find a ditch. Follow the ditch to a drain pipe.”

I smirked. “Good old drain pipes. Where would map designers be without that chestnut?”

“Hey, I welcome the cliche,” Blackrune said, chuckling.

We pressed on, trying like hell to step lightly so we didn’t sound like a herd of rhinos charging through the underbrush.

Before long, we found the ditch and traced it toward the center of the map. Just as Blackrune had said, it led us to a drainage grate big enough for us to crawl through. He pulled a flat crowbar from under his chintzy flak jacket and pried the grate away with a single, solid pull.

“Is that standard issue?” I asked him as he stashed the tool back under his armor.

“Nah, just the only thing I could afford with the fifteen credits I earned on guard duty.”

I almost said something about how surprising it was they paid him at all, but luckily the words didn’t form. Clearing my throat, I decided that praising the good luck of having it would play better.

“No doubt,” Blackrune said like an afterthought. His cannonball expression was hardening again, and watching him crawl into the dark, wet drainpipe, I could see he was all in. Intense. Ready to show the Rat Kings how badly a fucked up initiation can turn against you.

Climbing into the pipe behind him, that intensity was building in me, too. Would we capture the camp and win, legit? Probably not. But we weren’t going to march ourselves into the line of fire, either.

Just getting a couple of clean kills on Jim would make me feel a thousand times better. And crawling through the mud, banging my knees on the corrugated metal pipe, was damn sure worth the opportunity.