INSIDE THE PROCESSING PLANT

Mark is dead. The fact bummed Angie out. A lot. Maybe not dead, but left for dead, Angie remembered the conversation with the tunnel rats. But the rats were pretty sure he was dead. And his icon is off the screen. No reported status. Maybe he’s just out of range? No, couldn’t be. He’s dead.

She pushed the thought out of her mind. Right now she had to focus or she’d be dead too. There would be time later to sort out her thoughts and feelings.

The explosion helped her focus. It wasn’t a huge explosion, it was a controlled charge to blast the door open. Flanni and Suthhaven and Mike all agreed that it would be better to blow the door than mess with a lock. “Uh, shrapnel will take out anybody on the other side of the door,” Mike said.

As soon as the door was blown, Southaven and Flanni were through the door shooting. Then Angie went through and to the left. Her helmet switched to infrared. Using the heat maps, she looked for a a target, Nothing obvious, she thought. There were some small heat traces. Rats or people? In this game it could be either.

“Everybody must be under cover,” Flanni said.

“Advance,” Angie ordered. Flanni and Southhaven went first. As more of their soldiers came in, they fanned out and started advancing. This was a big factory or warehouse or processing plant or whatever. This end was full of crates- beautiful places to hide. As the smoke cleared she switched her visor back to normal.

Everybody went to ground when there was another explosion. “Report,” Angie ordered. She raised her voice to cut through the moaning on the intercom channel.

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“Booby trap,” a voice reported. Angie glanced at the status bar Ocean Blue, team Crayons. The report continued, “Red is hurt bad.” Team Crayons has Nectarine Orange, Sunrise Yellow, Ocean Blue and Red. Isn’t Red the squad leader?

“Do what you can for Red. Stabilize him and then join the advance,” Angie instructed. Red’s icon on the mini-map was blinking yellow and red. Quickly she called Red’s status. In her mind she could picture Flanni laughing that “Red was coding red.” Jerk, she thought.

Red’s had a disabled foot, burns, concussion damage, shrapnel, he was hurt bad. Angie closed the status.

“Catwalk,” Southhaven said. “Mike, Sunrise and I can do a repeat of the warehouse.” Sunrise Yellow was on team Crayons.

“Hope we don’t break anymore crayons,” Flanni whispered on a private intercom channel.

Angie ignored Flanni and looked over at the side wall of the building. There was a catwalk high up above that ran the length of the building. A glance at the opposite side of the building- there was one on each side, but this one was closer. The tracks up there probably supported a crane that could traverse the building.

“Do it.” Angie moved up to take Southaven’s place.

Abruptly, the firefight began. The rebel fighters had cover and didn’t have to move. Angie’s team had superior fire power and soon they would have the high ground. They were also players. The rebels were NPCs. Most NPCs had simple AI. Only a few, like Carmen and Marina had advanced AI.

Angie fired as she dashed from crate to crate. Flanni shot somebody before a flurry of bullets drove him back behind cover. When Angie reached him there was the sound of shooting, a LOT of shooting and a couple of grenades over in the direction Southaven and Mike had gone. Sunrise Yellow’s icon started blinking green and yellow. Then it went black.

It didn’t take a genius to know something was coming, and Flanni didn’t disappoint. “That team is gonna be pissed that you keep breaking the Crayons.”