Rick opened his eyes in a part of the map he’d never seen. He stood near a waterfall’s base, surrounded by lush vegetation and the sound of buzzing insects. It wasn’t as hot as it would have been in the real world, but the air was heavy with humidity. A single path led from the waterfall’s base into what appeared to be jungle.

“Yo, you there? Alex?”

Nothing. He panicked. “Alex!”

“I’m here. Chill. I waited until you were in so I could locate your server.”

He sighed. “Okay.”

“Oh shit! Run. Someone’s already headed right for you, and I can’t get to your location.”

“How do you know where I am?”

“I have a tracker on that SR array.”

“Elicit?” he asked.

Silence. Then she said, “Yeah. Don’t worry—they won’t find it. Security isn’t hardcore on a practice round.”

“I don’t like—”

“Holy fuck, Rick! Run!”

He ran. “Where am I going?”

“Uh… when you get to the first fork, go left—he’s coming the other way.”

He puffed as he carelessly crashed deeper into the jungle. There was no sign of a fork. “Where’s the fork?” A thought occurred to him. “Am I not supposed to fight him? Them? Whatever?”

The fork came into view and he dashed left.

“Rushers are usually suicide bombers—they’re likely doing wing duty for another player.”

Rick slowed his pace, thankful the game’s stamina system didn’t kick in outside of battle, but his true physical endurance had met a limit. “Where are they now?”

“Just got to the waterfall. Next fork has three paths, go right—I think I see a bot that way. Get closer to the center and I’ll try to find you.”

“Can’t I just defeat them?”

“Rick, you gotta trust me, okay? Suicide bombers are specced for taking out fresh players and nothing else. Most have illegal permanents hidden deep in their interfaces. They can’t get through an official match screening process, but they’re hell on players in practice.”

“So they’re cheating, like us?”

“We’re barely out of bounds here. In-game chat is fine—it’s just the locator that’s sketchy. Trust me, okay? I’m on your side.”

Trust. He shook his head and kept advancing.

“The lightning ring took out the suicide bomber. Fuck. I should have warned you about bombers, but I forget you came into this by a sort of back door. This is stuff any normal player learns right away.”

“Back door?”

“Most tourney players start as scrubs on public servers like this one.”

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Rick slowed. The bot Alex had mentioned paced along the path ahead of him. “I see the first bot. Had to be a fuckin’ Wild One, didn’t it?”

“Better than a bomber, man. You can do it.”

Rick took a deep breath. He’d encountered this type of Wild One before—a bipedal half-panther, but he’d never beaten it. “It’s the fucking panther.”

“You’ll beat it this time.”

He stepped into the Wild One’s detection zone and it smiled.

Right.

******************************************************

The path widened as he approached the panther-like creature, though it wasn’t nearly wide enough to let him feel comfortable fighting the bot. He’d have to watch his feet if he ended up in the scrubby patches of flora and the tangled roots along the jungle’s floor.

The panther’s body reminded him of an ancient cartoon about various humanoid cats who somehow also had a cat-lizard pet, as nonsensical as that was.

Black fur covered most of its body, except its muscle-bound chest. Though it had cat-like, long feet that rose far over its toes, making it look like its heels were backwards knees, those toes and a great deal of its foot had been squeezed into wrestling boots. It wore red fingerless gloves, allowing the inch-long claws that terminated each finger to peek out. Rick winced. He’d been raked by those claws before, and they hurt like hell. Once, the cat-like thing had even opened his guts, ending the game immediately. As he stepped forward, that’s what he feared most.

The cat-beast roared, a high-pitch hellcat scream that spoke to something in Rick’s brain—spoke to some ancestral memory of being on the wrong end of the food chain. He’d felt that before, in the ring in the old days before fighting got banned. He took a deep breath, and it cleared. He raised his arms and stepped forward.

The beast slowed its advance. Perhaps Rick’s quick shake off of the roar confused it. It nodded, as if in respect—weird as hell for a bot—then smiled and quickened its pace.

It leapt at Rick, who dodged, tapping the beast’s skull with a hammer fist after it passed.

The panther-creature stumbled, but it hadn’t been enough to knock it out. Rick jumped forward to attack its exposed back, but at the last moment, it turned, causing his blow to glance off its upper back. Rick stumbled through the motion, making sure to hustle away from the Wild One as it turned and tried to lock back on to his position. Nonetheless, he felt the wind of the beast’s slashing fists at his back as he ducked into a roll, then turned as he rose to his feet.

When he stood, the creature wasn’t on top of him, as he’d feared might be the case. Maybe this Wild One was a less powerful version of the enemy, but it telegraphed the signs of stamina drain, meaning it likely couldn’t match him move-for-move.

Rick’s own stamina was low, though. He’d learned how to skirt the edge of exhaustion, and he’d developed a good grasp of how much stamina certain moves devoured. He’d trained to find more efficient versions of dodges, blocks, and counters. That had given him an edge, and he used that advantage to avoid evisceration this time.

But it didn’t put him so far in the clear as to be safe. The panther-beast closed the distance more slowly, narrowing its eyes, as if considering a problem it hadn’t encountered before.

“Is this a low-level version of this bot?” he asked.

The sound of grunting and fast movements accompanied Alex’s return question. “What?”

“This panther thing.” Rick jumped sideways to avoid an incoming claw strike aimed at his abdomen, then pounded the side of the beast’s head before dashing back out of its way again. “It’s not as hard as the others.”

“Well, yeah. I cranked up the difficulty for all the Wild Ones.”

“What? Why?”

“What part of ‘two weeks to train to beat an experienced fighter’ do you not understand?”

“So all this hustling—”

“All this hustling”—she grunted again, as if she’d been hit—“almost won you your fight with Esposito, you dumbass.” The sound of rushing air came before she said, “Kinda busy right now. Talk later?”

Rick’s eyes went wide, as the Wild One put his arm in a lock. He panicked and dropped, then somersaulted between the panther-creature’s knees, causing it to lose its grip. He came up facing the cat-man’s back and delivered another hard blow to the base of its skull, and this time, it dropped.

He dove, but not quickly enough. While Rick was mid-roll, the panther-creature spun, its claws out and waiting.

In slow-motion, he fell toward the ten inch-long knives. The multiple puncture points and slashes confused his nervous system until he got through the first few seconds. Then, each pain impulse hit him at the same time, as if the time-delay of the shock had prevented signals from getting through, until finally, they couldn’t.

He roared, then laughed, as the pain turned to ticklishness. He roared in a strangely incoherent laugher as the beast tore him to shreds.