Neb was at the very instant where the trigger would bite and the round would fire when a golden line streaked across the sky.

He stared at it, not daring to believe it could be what he thought it was. It couldn’t be, could it? But there it was, written in the sky. Mallory had fired the rocket.

The scorps saw it too, and the change in the external environment seemed to refocus them on Neb. One of them pushed its way into position, getting ready to finish off the two humans.

Neb had no tag for Anna, and he could think of only one desperation play. He reached over and rolled her body on top of his, then wrapped his left arm and both legs around her. Would this work? He had no idea. He held the activation switch in his left hand, the pistol in his right. He raised his head to see the gray sphere. His heart was pounding, body shaking. Above him, the scorps screamed. He took one final deep breath. The world seemed to slow with it. He steadied himself as much as was possible in the most stressful moment of his life.

Then he pushed the button on the activation switch and simultaneously pulled the trigger on the pistol, just as the scorp plunged its spike downwards for the killing blow.

The world went utterly dark. There was no up or down, or light or dark. There was just nothingness, and a glimmer of awareness of himself. It lasted for what felt like a long time. I guess it didn’t work, he thought.

But then with a cacophonous rush of air and brightness and color and scent, the world returned.

He was lying on thick grass, looking up at the peaceful stars. He was still holding tight to Anna, and he very gently rolled her onto her back. She was down to one HP remaining.

Neb forced himself to his feet. They were on heath of thick grass and bracken. Not far away was the smoldering impact site of what he guessed was Mallory’s rocket. The wind was very cold, and he had the distinct sense that they were higher up than they had been. A glance at the map confirmed it -- they had traveled half way across the map to the top of a steep, flat mountain. Around him he heard familiar grunts and swears.

‘I need an orb!’ he called out. ‘I need an orb for --’

Then Meathead was there, crouching down and applying a blue orb to Anna’s chest. Before Neb could protest, Meathead applied a second orb to him. It was only when the relief washed over him that Neb understood how badly injured he had been himself, how close had been to the end.

He looked around. Everyone was there. Somehow, impossibly, they had all survived. He laughed a little to himself.

Gray had brought Neb’s rifle with her on the jump, and she handed it back to him as casually as if she had borrowed an umbrella. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘Doc,’ said Buzz. They all looked like hell, but Buzz looked the worst. He was covered in blood and filth and crusted with white goo. The moonlight made his skin so pale he could have been a zombie from the old tales. ‘Doc,’ he said again. ‘What in the everliving fuck just happened? How did we get here? We must be fifteen klicks from our position’

Neb shook his head, not able to answer at once. He tried to be calm but he felt a building elation.

‘The egress kit I took from the armory is intended to teleport the ultrafusion operators out of the blast zone of the weapon,’ he said. ‘It comes with tags and a sort of receiver, and I was able to tag everyone. Then Mallory put the receiver in the rocket and fired it here. I guess he aimed for this mountain.’

‘I just fired that fucker,’ Mallory answered. ‘I didn’t aim for shit.’

‘Wait,’ Buzz said. He was having a hard time following this. ‘So… We teleported here?’

‘Yes, sir. Exactly.’

‘Right,’ Buzz said. ‘And what the fuck is that?’ He pointed to the western horizon, where they had come from, and Neb’s heart skipped a beat as he looked that way for the first time. Rising in the darkness was a red-orange mushroom cloud, small against the landscape but distinctive. It would be huge up close.

‘Oh fuck,’ Neb said softly. ‘I guess I hit it.’ With the crushing tiredness and the utter shock at being still alive, he had never even thought of his final shot at the gray sphere from the tokamak rocket. ‘I bet that took out a few scorps.’

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He filled the others in on what he had done, and how he had used the last round for Anna’s pistol. When he had finished speaking Anna said: ‘I’m not tagged, though. I see them on everyone else but I don’t have one.’

‘No,’ Neb said. ‘I thought my tag would work for two people, and it did.’ He was still looking at the horizon, watching the mushroom cloud get broken up by the end.

‘That was a hell of a risk,’ Anna answered, and her expression was even harder to read than usual. ‘You should have left me.’

The unspoken part, he was pretty sure -- and it was probably intended to be a message received, at some level -- is that she would have left him.

‘Perhaps,’ he answered, surprising himself. ‘I didn’t have a lot of time to consider it.’

‘Okay,’ Buzz interrupted. ‘Well…’ Even he was having some trouble coming to terms with the turn of events, and went back to what he knew. ‘Everyone -- report status.’

They checked in on weapons and equipment and injuries and healing orbs, and the short version, Neb thought, was that even though they had escaped the scorp nightmare, they were still pretty much fucked. The heavy weapons systems were completely out of ammo. When they shared out the rifle ammo, they had less than two full mags per person, and less than that for their pistols. They had only one healing orb remaining of the eighteen they had taken from the base. Their armor was almost entirely gone bar a few pieces left for Meathead and Mallory, and no-one had any belt-shield energy left.

‘Okay,’ Buzz said, once they had taken stock. ‘We rest here a few hours until morning.’

No-one said anything about the wisdom of taking the direct road, or how they had walked into another trap, and Neb did not bring it up. Instead he checked the crash site of the rocket for the teleportation receiver, poking through the wreckage with his torch until he found it. It was completely inert, none of the symbols glowing as they did before. It seemed that single use really meant single use. He sighed. Teleportation would have been a useful ability.

Meathead and Gray stood watch while the rest sat together and ate and drank and tried to hunker down out of the cold wind. It was beautiful but austere on the mountaintop under the multitude of stars. The mountain was east almost as far as the Circle wall, and there were steep cliffs on three sides and a lake on the other. There was only one pass which led back to ground level, to the southeast of their current position.

‘At least that should give us a less-trafficked line of approach to the gate,’ Gray said. Neb saw what she meant -- they would be coming to the gate from the east, where there was little on the map except mountains and lakes, rather than from the north or west, where most of the other player teams were likely located.

Neb lay back on the grass and was almost instantly asleep. He awoke to a gentle kick from Meathead, instinctively reaching for his rifle. Meathead smiled down at him. ‘Twitchy, Doc,’ he said. ‘I like it.’

The sky was brightening. The landscape of the mountaintop faded from gray to green. It was very much like they had arrived in a different country, and it reminded Neb of the moors he had seen on childhood trips to Northern Europe. They packed up their few things and settled into the usual formation, and Neb trudged along tired and weary and covered in the filth of battle. But alive. Still alive, against all the odds.

With everything that had happened, their Circle clock had run down to less than thirty-four hours. Neb felt a twinge of anxiety. Not even a full day and a half remained. And once again had no weapons or ammo or armor, and they still had no idea how to get through the gate. They weren’t exactly crushing it.

There were hints of fields and order in the landscape that had not quite faded away. In places he saw mounds of grass and scattered broken stones that may have been buildings. Was the Game trying to show them something, or tell them something? The armory had clearly been a provocation, but he felt this was something more thoughtful. Maybe it was a representation of a Main world. Or maybe it was Earth, thousands of years into the future. But then, maybe it was nothing. With the power to create absolutely anything, it was easy to mistake the random and the profound.

The team constantly scanned for danger but saw nothing except grass and trees and sky. This land seemed to be forgotten, a part of the Game world not intended to get much use. It was beautiful in the full morning light, the kind of place Neb dreamed of spending his life writing and learning and thinking. Again he thought how nice it would be to explore this world peacefully, under very different circumstances. Maybe that was the point of this mountaintop area -- to remind them of something other than war.

‘You doing all right, Doc?’ asked a voice beside him, and he saw to his surprise that it was Mallory.

‘Hot clock and ready to rock,’ he answered.

‘We’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit since we got here,’ Mallory said. He didn’t seem exactly happy about it, but he also seemed not in any way perturbed. Neb looked away, a small gesture he hoped Mallory didn’t notice. ‘But that shit with the rocket was A-one, Doc,’ Mallory continued. ‘I didn’t know what the fuck you were doing, but now here we are, walking and talking.’

Neb smiled. ‘How did you even fire it?’ he asked Mallory. ‘I thought you were…’ He didn’t say it.

‘Dead. I know. So did I. But those things hesitated at the moment of the kill. Chattering to each other. Probably fighting about who was in charge.’

Neb glanced at him. He had never seen Mallory in a mood remotely like this. Almost introspective. ‘Anyway I was able to reach the rocket and hand-fire it from under the scorp pile. I didn’t think it would matter, but you know, I like to complete the mission.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘you get any more good ideas, Doc, you let me know. I’ll have your back.’ He slapped Neb on the shoulder hard enough to knock him off balance, then marched back up to the front of the line.