The path down from the mountaintop proved to be a long gentle valley. Buzz gave them a standard imminent-death pep-talk that it would be a perfect place for an ambush, but they saw no-one.

About half way down the valley they got a clear glimpse of the wall of the Circle in the middle distance, impossibly high. The reminder of the insincerity of the world was oppressive, Neb thought. None of this was real, and yet it was all too real. He found himself again wondering why the Main had built any of this, but he was sick of thinking about it. Perhaps it was simply that Main genius was indistinguishable from madness.

The closer they got to the bottom of the valley the quieter they became. The mountaintop had been reprieve, a few moments of wary peace. Neb knew he would never see that land again, and he felt sad about it. The fucking Game, he thought.

Once they reached ground level the air was hotter, the landscape sun-scorched, scrubby grasses and sandy soil scattered with ochre rocks. They kept moving south until they came to an old rutted trail, cracking and bulging in places and covered in sand, bending west in the direction of the gate around the south tip of the mountain. They were reluctant to follow it at first until Anna pointed out it was not even marked on the map. It seemed almost certain this area was not expected to get much player action, and the trail was worth the risk.

They covered ground steadily. Meathead still had some pieces of heavy armor on his left arm, giving him an asymmetrical profile, but otherwise it was all gone, and he and Mallory moved more easily. All of them looked terrible, their eyes standing out brightly from the muck and grime on their faces. They had been through hell, and yet it felt as if things had barely gotten started.

As they walked, Neb checked his game stats and saw he had reached Level 6. On the team stats he could see no-one else was at that level yet. He suspected it was a combination of the teleportation trick and taking out so many of the scorps. The Game seemed to reward behavior that was more than just running and shooting. And yet, it seemed to create situations where options beyond running and shooting were very hard to find.

He checked the map again for a safehouse, but there was nothing. He would have loved some proper rest and a chance to discuss levels and skill options with Ver. He thought again of the library. Even if they tried to reach it now, they would barely have time to get there and back. He sighed.

The trail would eventually join an east-west road that would bring them to the main road to the gate, and they kept moving steadily. They had been walking in silence for some time when Meathead said, to no-one in particular: ‘Why the fuck do they have roads if they can teleport?’

Neb half-smiled to himself. It was a good question to which, like so much else, they had no answer.

They kept going for almost another hour, and then Buzz held up his closed fist. Neb had been thinking of home, his mind far away from the Game, but the command gesture had been so deeply trained into him that his body reacted before his mind did.

‘Something ahead,’ Buzz whispered.

They got off the trail and moved through hillocky dunes until they could see it more clearly. Up ahead a burned-out truck lay diagonally across the trail, its structural cage showing like blackened bones. There was a cab for a driver and passengers up front, so it was old, pre-automation. Around the truck were the ruined remains of several other vehicles -- troop carriers, weapons platforms, logistics trucks. All of them were badly damaged. At the center of the gathering was a large truck which had probably been a command vehicle, better built and more heavily armored than the others. It had been hit by some kind of weapon which sliced through it on multiple planes, as if it had been chopped with great knives moving and intersecting in several directions simultaneously. The machine had fallen in on itself awkwardly, re-arranged like a post-structural sculpture. Panels and sections and small windows were misaligned strangely.

‘What the fuck happened here,’ Buzz asked quietly. There was no sign of life or movement. Carefully they got closer, checking for traps or any sign of ambush. But whatever had happened here, it had happened long before the Game had even started, Neb thought, if that could make any sense.

They explored carefully, wary of traps. Neb checked the front part of the main truck, and when he came around to the front of the cab he almost jumped. ‘Fuck,’ he murmured. Two burned-out skeletons were sitting in the seats, their uniforms still recognisable. Just enough of their muscles and tendons and clothes remained to hold them together. They grinned out through the broken windshield.

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Meathead glanced at them. ‘Poor bastards,’ he said. Neb found it hard to look away.

‘Doc,’ Gray called. ‘Let’s check the back.’

‘Acknowledged,’ he said, and made himself move on.

To get into the back of the eviscerated truck they had to duck under strange angles of fallen and severed metal, but there was nothing of interest to be found. Neb was just about to suggest they get out before their movement made the truck collapse further when he heard a sharp intake of breath from Gray. Right at the back of the truck there was a crate, and it was labeled neatly in all-capitals: ULTRAFUSION FIELD LAUNCH SYSTEM.

Gray looked at him without speaking. Beneath the writing was the same Main rune Neb had seen back in the armory back at the base.

Gray lifted the lid on the crate, but it was empty. They could see from the packing foam that it had been a relatively small launch system, similar to Mallory’s tokamak rockets.

They brought the case out to show Buzz, who examined it closed. ‘Pity it’s gone,’ he said, straightening up. ‘But this is a sign. It has to be.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘It’s the Game telling us we need one of these fusion weapons, right? It has to be. This whole scene has been here a long time. None of the other players did this.’

‘It could be,’ Gray answered carefully. When Buzz was in this kind of mood, disagreeing required a very cautious approach. ‘But need it for what?’

‘Something like the scorps, only worse,’ Buzz said. ‘Fuck knows. But it can’t be a coincidence that we’ve come across this ultrafusion system twice.’ He looked at Neb. ‘Lay it on me, Doc. You think this is another trap?’

Neb started to say that yes, most definitely this is another trap, but he paused. They were in the middle of nowhere, and it was by pure chance they had found the scene. The Game had not been not trying to ram it down their throats, or to tease them with it like with the clearly-marked military base. Perhaps what it was saying was: This weapon is important. People will kill for it. So what are you going to do?

‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said slowly. ‘The Game gave us a fuckload of guns, then put us in a position where all the firepower in the world wouldn’t help us. But the armory was also where we found the teleportation kit, and that’s what saved us. I don’t think any of these messages from the Game are clear cut.’

Buzz thought about it. ‘Well,’ he said after a moment. ‘We don’t need to decide anything right now. Let’s keep moving and recon the gate before nightfall, then find somewhere to bed down.’

They didn’t speak much as they left the ambush site behind. They followed the last of the trail until it met the east-west road, where the going was easier but they felt more exposed. The endgame was not close, exactly, but it was in sight, Neb thought, as he examined the gate area carefully on the map. This road would hit the main road about five kilometers north of the gate, meaning there was an option to turn off early and go south-west cross-country, avoiding what would surely be a heavily trafficked section of the main north-south road. Buzz must have been looking at the same thing, because he said: ‘Team -- let’s cut the corner for the gate in about two klicks. The terrain looks passable and the approach angle is good.’

When they got to the spot that Buzz meant, they found themselves in an area of rolling sandy hills that made Neb sigh. They turned off the road and at once their boots sank into the sand. It was hot in the evening sun, and Neb felt his energy being sapped ever more quickly. Sweat dripped from his forehead and made little wet circles on the sand, but at last they reached the base of the final hill. From its top they should be able to look southwest towards the gate, not much over a kilometer distant.

They edged forward, weapons drawn. ‘Easy now,’ Buzz hissed. ‘Could find some company here.’ Neb found himself filled with a sudden surge of pride at how far they had come. They were about to see the gate. When Ver had first shown them the map with the gate at its southern tip, he had never really believed they would make it this far.

But when they reached the top and looked out into the middle distance, any feeling of positivity drained away. It was replaced at first by confusion, and then by dread.

They were higher up than he had expected. There were no other players to be seen. The air was clear, visibility perfect. The sun was low in the west. The gate was absolutely huge, a towering enormity standing even taller than the Circle wall. A smooth arch rose and fell over it, supported by two vast columns. The peak of the arch was fifty meters or more above the ground.

Chained between the two pillars was a creature that was almost incomprehensibly large. Its head was long and narrow and swept up and back into two horns, like a goat’s head had been crossed with something vaguely human. Despite the height of the gate arch the tips of the creature’s horns were not far below it. The creature’s skin was a reddish-brown, its arms like a greatly-scaled-up version of Meathead’s or Mallory’s. Its legs were cocked in the center, more animal than human. It had hooves rather than feet. It held a whip, a long multi-tailed thing that dragged on the ground and emitted a whitish-blue light.

Neb stared and stared, not able to make sense of what he was seeing. There was a small village set back from the gate with dots moving amongst the low buildings, and it was a blow to his sense of perspective to realize that those dots were people. The size of the gate was just very difficult to take in.

No-one spoke until Meathead said: ‘Fuck me.’