“What do we do?” I asked, the rifle suddenly feeling much heavier against my shoulder. “Fight or run?”

All three of the giant cats were padding around to face our direction. I had no way of knowing if they saw us, smelled us, or heard us — but they definitely knew we were hiding in the grass three hundred yards away. Though they were in no hurry to attack.

Their casual movements and staring just made it that much terrifying.

“Shoulda brought shotguns,” Tony whispered to Jim. “I freakin’ told you.”

My takeaway was that our rifles weren’t the best choice for killing lions the size of minivans. I swallowed hard, eyes were locked on the Exos that had turned their backs to the watering hole — one huge, yellow beast for each of us.

To eat each of us, I mean.

“Uhm, should we start shooting?” I asked, side eyeing Jim over my rifle’s buttstock.

A long pause. He took a breath. “If they come at us, fire away. But aim for their heads, or these ARs won’t damage ‘em enough by the time they’re on top of us.”

I didn’t have time to ask why we’d brought assault rifles if they weren’t up to the task — one of the dire lions roared what must’ve been the cat equivalent of ‘time to eat’. All three of the huge, yellow cats ran toward us, plumes of dirt and grass kicking up behind them.

“NOW!” Jim yelled, though it sounded more like a panic response than an order.

Tony yelled something too, but by the time it left his mouth, all three of us were dumping rounds downrange so fast I couldn’t make it out. The savannah erupted in the rapid pop-and-thump of rifle actions, and the supersonic cracks of bullets in flight. With my rifle kicking against my shoulder, I was overtaken by the strangest sensation I’d ever felt. If ‘confused joy’ was a thing, that’s what I’d call the wave that washed over me and made time slow down to a crawl.

The sound of our rifles, the muzzle flashes, the grass under and around me — it was all so real. As was the complete terror born from the teeth and claws bearing down on us, mixed with the excitement of fighting back. What made it confusing was the knowledge in the pit of my brain that, at the end of the day, this was still a game.

All of these thoughts burst to life inside my brain in an instant, and they faded just as quickly. The world returned to speed, my nose filled with the smell of cordite, and there was nothing left but the rush by the time the first dire lion pounced on our position.

Blood sprayed across my face when it landed on Jim. No time to work out if it was my friend’s or the Exo’s. Tony and I both kept shooting and shouting.

I rolled onto my back, ejected my empty magazine, and fumbled a fresh reload from the pouch on my plate carrier. Everything was slick with blood. Two feet away, the second cat appeared from the grass and dropped his jaws on Tony’s shoulder like a housecat picking up a stuffed mouse.

Finally seating the magazine in my rifle, I slapped the bolt release and pulled the trigger. I managed to send about ten rounds into the second Exo’s head before the third one swiped at my neck.

Intense pain…a lot more intense than I’d expected. I threw up. I blacked out.

My last thought was wondering how many of these responses were simulated, and how many were actually happening to the version of me sitting at home hooked to an Immersion console.

***

Of course, that wasn’t my last thought.

I guess you’d call it the last thought of that particular life. Blinking through the lingering pain sensations in my neck, I was greeted by an after-action report screen covered in stats. Much like the inventory interface, it filled my vision like I was standing in front of a huge touchscreen.

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Hm. Apparently, I’d landed 28% of my shots. That seemed low.

No kills? No shit.

And a big, empty gridded window where my loot would be. If I’d gotten any.

At least I’d earned over six hundred experience points, taking me almost all the way to Level 2 according to the nearby progress bar. And I earned a medal:

DIE FOR THE FIRST TIME AT HFL3

I punched the floating button marked ‘CONTINUE’ and the screen faded away. The room with bunks and lockers — our private quarters — came to life in its place. Tony was laying down on his lower bunk, while Jim fiddled around with some kind of oversized sci-fi shotgun. Both of them had taken off their helmets and body armor.

“Did we make it?” I asked, smirking.

Tony groaned, and I realized from his hand gestures that he was busy inside some other in-game screen. Jim looked up from his shotgun and shook his head at me. A serious answer to a facetious question — which probably meant he was too focused on planning revenge to tell the difference.

“Hey, I got a medal. First death at HFL3.”

“Grats, bro,” Tony said, sitting up on his bunk to face me. “Feels pretty shitty the first time, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“HFL,” Jim muttered, still fondling the weapon. “Haptic Feedback Level…so basically pain level.”

“Oh! I didn’t put that together. Level three out of how many?”

“Ten,” Tony answered flatly.

My eyebrows shot up. “Ten?! It hurt enough at three! Why would anyone crank it up that high?”

“Bro,” Tony chuckled, shaking his head, “you really need to RTFM. Higher pain levels give better loot and more XP.”

Jim finally leaned his shotgun against the wall and turned his full attention to us. “Yeah, you had your zero-prep intro to the game. Trial by fire or whatever. Now, will you do your freakin’ homework so you know how to play?”

I barked a laugh. Neither of my friends ever understood why I liked figuring things out on my own. Tony pretty much shrugged it off, but my ‘play style’ seemed to really irritate Jim. It was the same in every game we ever played together.

I waited for Jim to say something else, or for Tony to change the subject, but the former was staring at me with a cocked eyebrow while the latter pretended to tie his boots. Or was he really tying his boots? Would that be a detail they’d bother adding to a combat simulation?

Smiling, I answered their silence. “Alright, guys! I’ll read some build walkthroughs or something.”

“Start by reading the Intro Guide,” Tony said. “You can get through the menu. At least read all the quick start notes.”

Jim scoffed. “You’ll have plenty of time for it now.” He picked up the shotgun and shoved it into his locker before slamming the door shut. “Twenty-four hour time lock on that Op.”

“So we can’t do another portal for a day?”

Tony stood from his bunk and smoothed his shirt. “An RL day. About three day-night cycles here.”

“Shit,” I said, folding my arms. “I got to spend twenty minutes in the actual game, and now I’m locked out for that long? How are people not quitting left and right?”

“It was a Limited Portal, part of this week’s event,” Jim said. “Time locked, extra difficult, penalties are higher.”

Tony smirked. “But better rewards.” He squinted. “When you don’t get eaten by Exos.”

Jim nodded at the obvious qualifier. “And when you read the guide, you’ll see the game goes deep beyond the portals. Check out ‘Jobs’ and ‘Pursuits’. They’re like quests that happen outside the portal raids.”

I liked the sound of that.

Jim continued, “You could pull guard duty to earn credits. Do research. Work in the armory…”

“Or the chow hall.” Tony cut in with a grin.

Clearly I had a lot of studying to do. I’d expected Meta Mercs to be a ‘jump in, jump out’ looter shooter like most of the others. Maximum gunplay, minimal everything else.

Instead, it was a world within a world. Jobs? Pursuits? No wonder the news had so many sensational stories about Immersion addiction.

Good thing I didn’t have that kind of personality. That’s what I told myself when Jim logged out and Tony left the room to work on his own Pursuits. I took it as a chance to kick back on my bunk and read the Intro Guide. So I did.

And a few hours later, my head was burning with possibilities. I couldn’t think of anything besides the game.