The last fifty feet of the drain pipe was complete darkness. Muddy darkness that smelled like rotting plants and something worse.

When we reached a small circle of light at the far end, Blackrune whispered that we should both exit as quickly and quietly as possible. According to the strategy guide in his head, if they saw him exit the tunnel, Jim or Tony would just hurl a grenade in, so there was no point in me staying behind while he cleared the egress.

Sounded good to me, since I had a natural aversion to being inside tight spaces filled with fire and shrapnel.

“This opens up into a pit near the camp latrines,” he added. “It won’t be…nice.”

I nodded, but doubted he could see the gesture. Even with the circle of light in front of him, his head and shoulders were little more than rim-lit shadows.

He crawled into the daylight, then went to one knee with his weapon ready — his boots creating more subtle squishing noises than I cared to hear. But I was out in the tropical sunlight right behind him. Both of our uniforms were now considerably more brown than gray, but we blended well with the dugout midden.

Beyond the pit’s rim, some of the camp’s features stood like the backdrop of a weird, sci-fi terrarium. Walls made from stacked concrete barriers, quick-deploy quonset huts, and Ouroboros-marked polymer crates sat in stacks, all surrounded by giant ferns and winding vines.

My eyes were quickly drawn to the tallest structure in sight. A tower, built like a scissor lift for easy deployment, with Tony in the canopied copula at the top — his back to us, and his eye glued to his rifle’s scope.

“Cover him,” Blackrune whispered before crouch walking out of the midden toward the camp’s far corner. “They get one chance to surrender, okay?”

I agreed.

That meant I wouldn’t get the first shot at Jim, but I was too exhilarated by having any chance of survival at all to care. Keeping my heart rate steady was a challenge, and after finding a nice hide behind a stack of gray crates, even holding my sight over Tony’s back felt like trying to keep a swinging pendulum from moving.

Now, out of the pit, I could also see Jim’s tower. About fifty meters away, butted up against the far concrete wall, with a stealthy, gunk-covered Blackrune creeping up beside it. Good thing I didn’t have to cover Jim, too — with my excitement, there’s no way I could make the shot from here.

Above me, Tony was still sweeping the treeline through his scope. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear him speaking. Probably complaining to Jim over coms about us hiding. I glanced at Blackrune, made eye contact, and nodded.

He held up his left hand, rifle still trained on the completely oblivious Jim, and counted down from three with his fingers.

Finishing the count, he snapped back into his firing stance like a spring-loaded trap. Blackrune’s voice boomed across the camp, drowning out the persistent buzzing of flies and distant squawks of birds: “Drop the rifles, we got you both locked down!”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

I couldn’t see Jim’s reaction, but through my sights I could tell that Tony nearly crapped his upgraded trousers.

“Don’t move, Tony,” I called up, “you’re dead to rights, my man!”

“You scared the shit out of me, Silky,” he yelled back, half-smiling and leaning his rifle against the inside of the guard tower’s cupola. “Nice moves, though!”

Still holding my sights on him, I chuckled, but it faded fast when some back-and-forth shouting broke out from Blackrune’s side. It sounded like Jim wasn’t being as cool about the sneak attack.

“Just drop it!” I heard my partner shouting, his stance tense, but unwavering.

Jim yelled something else, then Blackrune cracked off three rounds from his assault rifle, and my heart jumped inside my ribs.

The surrounding movement of swaying trees and buzzing insects slowed down, and a throbbing, ringing sound filled up my head. But it wasn’t from the gunfire — the sound was coming from inside my skull.

Ignoring it, or trying to, I looked back at Tony.

He was just as confused as I felt, glancing from the other tower and back to me like he was waiting for me to tell him what to do. Then his hand jerked toward the sidearm in his thigh holster.

I squeezed my trigger twice. Then, recentering my sights on Tony’s chest, two more times. The ringing sound amplified, and it turned into a flood of other sensations. Copper in my mouth, cordite in my nose.

Tony toppled forward and fell thirty feet to the ground in front of me with an awful crunch of dislocating joints and clattering hardware.

“Silky!” Blackrune yelled, but my eyes stayed fixed on the crumpled remains of my friend. “Jim’s down!”

I blinked. Blood pooled around Tony.

“Hey! Silky! Jim’s down! You okay?!”

Filling my lungs with breath for the first time since pulling the trigger, I called back, “Yup. Got Tony.”

He’s dead. Really dead. But worse, the way he fell made him look like a mosquito that was too slow to avoid a windshield.

Running footsteps came to a skidding halt next to me. Blackrune smacked my shoulder, but I still couldn’t turn my head to look at him.

“They’ll be back in like thirty seconds,” he added. “We gotta be ready!”

I blinked again. “Huh?”

“Respawns, buddy! They’re coming back!”

Staring at Tony, I couldn’t get my brain to understand how someone could come back from that.

It’s just a game. I said it again, inside, mixed with the throbbing ringing noise that reminded me of rushing water. Drowning water.

Then Blackrune shoved me, hard, and I had to break from my fixation to stop from falling over.

“Get it together,” he growled, pointing to Tony, “or you’re gonna look like that in about fifteen seconds!”

For what it was worth, that was a good motivator. I took the opportunity to change magazines — something different to look at, think about — slapped the bolt release on my rifle, and followed Blackrune at a sprint.