5:06 PST, September 28

Diamond View Apartments

Las Vegas, Nevada

Rick woke to a pounding in his head and a pounding on his door. He tried to roll over but was caught up in the snarl of blankets and the clothes he still wore. His t-shirt was twisted sharply to one side from where he'd been sprawled across the bed. The pillow was damp where he had been drooling.

"What? Who is it?"

He sat up, and the world spun. He really had to stop drinking while raiding far into the night. It had been well past midnight when he’d finally logged off and collapsed into a drunken stupor. The clock on his bedside table read 5:07. Much too early to be awake. If he’d wanted to get up at dawn he’d have finished school and gotten a real job like his parents wanted. There weren’t many perks to being an underemployed loser, but sleeping past seven was one of them.

The pounding at the door continued. "Mr. Staunton-Jones, are you there?" an imperious voice called from the apartment hallway.

Rick stumbled to his feet, bounced off the desk-- that was going to leave a bruise on his thigh-- and stamped into a pair of jeans before staggering down the hall.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," he called. His head was killing him. As he passed the kitchen table on the way to the door, he snatched up a half-empty can of Red Bull and shot it back. He winced at the lukewarm taste and dropped it in the trash can just before he reached the door.

The pounding stopped as he turned the bolt. He cracked the door just slightly, keeping the security chain engaged, and tried to glare at whoever was in the hall. He squinted at the pair of dim shapes. They wore dark suits and stern expressions. Great. His landlord had hired mob enforcers to scare him into paying on time this month.

"What do you want?" He closed one of his eyes, trying to block out his hangover.

"Are you Mr. Roderick Staunton-Jones?"

These weren’t mob enforcers. One had an earpiece, and the suits were way too nice to risk getting blood on them. Government men, then. Had he forgotten to use the VPN last time he downloaded a bootleg game? “Who's asking?" It sounded dumb the second it came out of his mouth, but Rick wasn’t at his best just now.

The door was shoved open with enough force to rip the chain out of the doorframe. Rick stumbled back. "Hey, you can't come in here. Do you have some kind of warrant?"

A badge was shoved into Rick’s face. It looked official enough, but he was in no shape to read it. “Mr. Staunton-Jones, we require you to come with us immediately.”

He tried to protest, but it was useless. They just stood there in his living room, glaring at him, demanding he cooperate. Rick vaguely considered going for the old Beretta in the shoebox in his closet, or even the broadsword he had hanging on his wall. But the Beretta was unloaded, the broadsword was an eSports tournament trophy with no edge, and these men had badges that might be real and guns that definitely were.

He dismissed the urge and stamped into his shoes without socks -- he hated that feeling -- before they all but dragged him down the stairs and into a waiting car. It was a featureless black SUV, a lot nicer than any of the other POS-es in the run-down apartment lot. They opened the rear passenger door and saw him in before climbing into the front seats.

The early morning was cool and they hadn't given him time to put on a jacket. "Where are we going? Hey, I don't even have my phone."

"You won't be needing it."

Well, that was ominous. “Or my wallet."

The man in the passenger seat, who hadn't been doing any of the speaking, flipped the cracked leather billfold over the seat to him. Rick clumsily caught it, and for a moment just stared at it in disbelief. He’d left it on the night table with his phone, so it had been easy for them to find it. Why had they bothered? He tried to marshal his thoughts. It would be easier without the hangover. Maybe they had been checking that he really was who they were looking for. After all, he hadn't said one way or the other.

Damn, he should have hidden the wallet. That was a stupid thought. He hadn’t been expecting anyone to pound on his door in the middle of the night and demand to know who he was, so why would he even try to hide it? But his brain was always looking for an out, for an angle, for some tactical choice he could have made differently.

It served him well as a hardcore raider in the game Everwar. In real life, it was just an endless parade of what-ifs dredged up by his subconscious in the late hours to remind him of all his failings.

What if he hadn't gotten into a shouting match with Dr. Morito over his dissertation? What if he had been supportive when his girlfriend applied for the space program? Or what if he hadn't chosen to try that damned exploit during the collegiate Everwar raid championship?

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Can I at least get a bottle of water?" Rick rubbed his throbbing temple.

A plastic disposable bottle materialized in the silent man's hands while the slightly more talkative one turned out of the parking lot into the road. Rick twisted off the cap and drained half the bottle in one gulp. He swallowed and decided to see what else he could get from these men. "Where are you taking me?" he asked then though of a better question. "Why me?"

No reply. The silent guy just stared, while the other one drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.

He tried several variations of his questions before exhausting the driver’s patience. “It's not our business to tell you that.”

“Ah, so you don't know.”

The man growled and hunched over the wheel. Rick knew he had struck gold. These were just flunkies. He wasn't going to get any answers out of them. So instead, he settled back into his seat and closed his eyes. His hangover was beginning to recede.

He had heard stories from his grandfather about soldiering in Vietnam. He figured two-thirds of them were bullshit and the others exaggerated. But Gramps had talked a lot about the ability of any seasoned soldier to fall asleep, any time, any place. It was a skill Rick had cultivated himself. Ten minutes between classes, get some shut eye. Waiting for the raid to zone in or the healer to finally arrive, close your eyes and get some rest. It served him well and he was able to nod off, almost instantly, with the half-drunk bottle of water tucked in his folded arms.

Rick awoke as dawn was beginning to light the sky. The sedan pulled up in front of a gatehouse, and a man in uniform waved them through. It took him a moment to realize where they were. This was definitely McCarren International Airport, but instead of the main terminal, he had been driven to a small terminal off to the side, right onto the tarmac. As many long-time residents of Vegas knew, that was where the red-striped planes carried people to places mysterious—for reasons classified.

Why the hell were they taking him anywhere?

When he’d been picked up, he’d expected to be taken to a police station, an FBI office, or maybe even driven out into the desert, only to realize these were fake cops and he had somehow pissed off a mafia don. All those scenarios seemed equally unlikely. No one hated him enough to kill him—except maybe Team Technique. Or any of the many teams who had booted him since that fateful championship. But surely not enough to hire thugs to take him out. He was — to his chagrin — just not important enough for this sort of thing.

The car pulled up in front of the terminal. The silent operative opened the door and gestured him out. Rick didn’t make a fuss about it. Rather than going inside the building, he was escorted immediately across the tarmac and up a small set of stairs into a large, nearly unadorned Boeing 737. The fuselage was white with a single red stripe down the side. There were no windows, but as he was ushered inside, he was surprised to find a fairly normal passenger plane. Rows of seats, overhead compartments for baggage—everything looked standard, except for the lack of windows. There was even a flight attendant, smiling and ushering him on board with that fake, almost genuine look they practiced so well.

"Holy shit, it’s you!" someone called from down the aisle.

Rick blinked under the faint artificial lights and rubbed his bleary eyes, having only just woken up for the second time that morning. To his surprise and horror, he saw the assembled members of Team Technique—almost all of them.

"Who’s missing?" he asked, squinting at the familiar lineup of scowling faces. The scowls were familiar too. He counted heads. Pratt, Jens, Scott, Kim, and Andrews. All but — “Where’s Rodriguez?”

Rodriguez’s gamertag was ThunderGod, with some extra numbers at the end Rick could never remember, and he wasn’t present. But all the others were there. It had been almost a year since he’d seen any of them and they looked about as happy to see him as he was to see them.

Team Captain Pratt stepped into the aisle, blocking Rick’s way. The captain folded his arms. "What are you doing here?"

Rick glanced around, then back over his shoulder as the uniformed men disappeared down the boarding steps.

He looked back at Pratt. "Hell, man. What are any of us doing here?"

The captain glared at him for a long moment before unfolding his arms. His scowl didn’t leave his face. "Hell if I know." He paused. "One minute, we’re celebrating our win at the HyperX Arena, the next a bunch of assholes in suits stormed in to demand we come with them."

Rick’s headache was back, throbbing behind his eyes. Now he remembered why he had stayed up so late and drank so heavily. The Finals had been the night before. He had stayed up and watched his old team take the crown just across town at the HyperX arena. After that, he had logged into Everwar and torn through pick-up-group raids, charging into battle like a man possessed. He had been kicked from so many groups he’d lost count. At some point, he had staggered to bed and passed out.

The half-drunk water bottle was still there in his hand, and he took another sip of it. It did little to assuage his dehydration and hangover.

Several of the old team pelted him with questions, but he ignored them, throwing himself down into an empty seat and tilting it back as the flight attendant told them in no-nonsense terms to sit down and strap in for takeoff.

"Wake me when we get there," Rick said, closing his eyes.

Scott was asking where "there" would be as he drifted off again, right about as the plane levelled off at cruising altitude.

He slept through the wheels touching down, the plane taxiing, and only awoke when the hatch was opened and midday sunlight streamed in. The air that poured in was thick, warm, and humid—it smelled of the sea.

Rick was ushered off the plane with the other five members of his old team. Since none of them had any baggage, it didn’t take more than a couple minutes. The Technique members pelted the silent flight crew with unanswered questions. Rick took it all in stride.

They disembarked onto wide open empty tarmac. In the distance was a terminal—modest by most standards—and Rick didn’t recognize what airport it belonged to. Outside the perimeter was scrub brush and grasslands. The Southwest? He couldn’t think of many airports like this so close to the sea. It didn’t feel like California, somehow.

He turned. In the distance towered the unmistakable sight of the SpaceR corporate spaceport in South Texas. Three gleaming rockets were lined up on their pads, stretching their fingers to the sky. His jaw dropped.

“Oh, hell yeah!” Jens shouted. “The aliens are coming and they need us to save the day. Last Starfighter time, guys!”

And hell if Rick didn’t think that maybe Jens was right.