“Overwatch in position.” Marcus heard over his radio.

“Entry team in position.”

“Right in position.”

“Left in position.” Marcus answered. “Overwatch fire on my mark. Three. Two. One. Firefirefire.”

Before he finished the first ‘Fire’, he heard the harsh reports of MacKenzie and Abbott’s suppressed weapons and two of the zombies’s heads exploded. Before they started to fall to the ground, the third one collapsed minus its head. Red numbers flashed above their heads as they dropped.

“Assault, go, go, go.”

The three teams sprinted across the street and up their respective lanes. Marcus and his team sheltered by the huge front tire of the monster truck, with Mathers watching their back and the street.

Andrews and Nobel ran up onto the front porch and Andrews slammed his foot into the door. It nearly tore off its hinges as Nobel tossed in a flash-bang.

Douglas and Costello raced up the right side of the building to cover the rear.

The flash-bang went off with eye-searing light and thunderous noise. Andrews and Nobel ducked inside, and gunfire and yelling rang out.

...and stopped.

Marcus waited. He wanted to know what was going on, but he had to stick to the plan and wait.

What seemed like an eternity later, Andrews signalled the All Clear from the front door and waved them in.

Marcus tapped Mathers on the shoulder and the three of them headed across the yard and into the house. Inside it was a mess, but Marcus was relieved to see the inside matched the outside, and the Kansas farmhouse he had seen on his last trip was nowhere to be seen.

Instead there were bodies. He quickly scanned them, looking for his team. Andrews shook his head.

“No sign of them boss. No one here but the sim-insurgents you should have found the last time. They went down just like a kill-house exercise...but our people aren’t here. Douglas and Costello are double checking the basement for holdouts…tunnels…intel and...we got nothing.”

“Shit.” Marcus hissed. He had hoped this was going to be a simple in-and-out. Get his people to the Evac Pylons and get them home. Now he had to find them first. He turned to Neville.

“Tell me everything you can about this neighbourhood, as it appears now, and everything between us and the nearest EP. Then find out if that thing can locate our people.”

“The Sim should be in Random Insurgents Mode, which means there are very few predictable encounters...but that doesn’t account for the truck parked outside or the zombies. We shouldn’t be seeing anything beyond small groups of insurgents moving randomly, or occupying random buildings. They are programmed to respond to visual or noise threats by approaching and shooting. They should only have rifles in the smaller groups, or in larger groups a few grenade launchers.”

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“So you’re saying we shouldn’t see tanks or aliens or zombies or monster trucks, but having seen some of them the others become possible.”

“Mostly. The system shouldn’t be capable of generating ‘new’ imagery, so they had to come from somewhere. My guess is this supposed hack is changing things.”

“Supposed?” Marcus looked at her. “You don’t think the official story is accurate?”

“I think it’s accurate as far as it goes, but I’m not sure it’s the whole story. You don’t just ‘hack’ into a system this sophisticated, inside this much security...at least not without some level of inside knowledge. I mean you have to know it even exists in the first place.”

“Wait, you think this breach had inside help? Have you told anyone this?”

“I tried, but the idea was too...too much for them to accept, so they ignored me.”

“...and this is why you volunteered to come inside with us?” realised Marcus.

“Mostly, yes. The rest was the opportunity to get inside the world’s most advanced VR sim.” she shrugged. “We spend so much time working ‘on’ it, but we seldom get a chance to see what’s happening ‘inside’ it. The Sandbox isn’t really the same thing.”

“I get you there. Nobody wants to spend all their time training and never put it to use.” Marcus said before turning serious again. “Okay, we know our laser guns work in here, but we still need to find our people and get out. Neville, what can you tell me?”

“Well, I can tell you that we have a limited amount of direct control over the environment, so while I can’t clear away all of the buildings between us and where we want to go, I can create some limited objects.”

“How limited?”

“Do you want to blend in, or stand out?”

“Unless you can whistle up some huge stompy robots for us, blending in is good.”

Neville leaned over her tablet and worked furiously for a minute, then stood up, apparently pleased with herself. “Take a look out front.”

Nobel looked out the front window and laughed, “Where the hell where you in Kandahar?”

Marcus walked over to the window and looked out. There were two pickup trucks in front of the house, each with a machine gun on a stand in the bed.

“I can bring them up because they’re in the system for opposing forces, but they’re designated a Neutral Asset so anyone can use them.” Neville said. “I believe they are called ‘technicals’.”

“Smart ass.” Marcus retorted. “What else can you do with that thing? A couple of drones would be handy right about now.”

“I have the specs for a small surveillance UAV, but nothing with weapons.”

“Well, get a couple of those drones in the air and we’ll see what is going on around us, then we’ll move out to the EP and clear each of them in turn.”

Neville got back to work.

Maybe she wasn’t such a dead weight after all, thought Marcus.