Not a Monster
"Gone..."
I had no idea how it had happened, but the teammate who'd been in the same room as me had vanished. With the bomb defusal nearly complete, they were clearly sprinting straight for the objective. Best guess: they'd slipped out through the hole in the reinforced wall.
I checked the rounds still left in the sniper rifle. The standoff sat at four to one. We could take the first round without me lifting a finger. From the voice chat, it sounded like they'd already pinned down the fleeing enemy's position. The moment our side held the objective, the other team had no path to a win.
Before long a notification flashed that the enemy player was dead, and the first round of a mission I'd never played before wrapped up with a faintly anticlimactic air.
Now it was our turn to switch sides. A completely different set of gadgets caught my eye. Where the attacking team's kit had focused on destruction and disruption, the defending team's leaned into reinforcement and ambush. From the Entry Denial Device I'd seen moments ago, to the gas grenade I'd mistaken for smoke, to a signal jammer that rendered drones useless — there were even gadgets packing technology that looked impossible to replicate in the real world.
A device that generated a hologram of yourself? I couldn't help wondering how they'd even built something like that. I knew it existed purely for the sake of the game, but I still found myself wishing it were real. Not that I couldn't live with it.
From the pile of gadgets, I picked Preemptive Defense. According to the description, it intercepted incoming projectiles — grenades, smoke canisters, that sort of thing. With the objective spawning underground, it was exactly the kind of gadget I needed. Nothing was more dangerous than a grenade going off in a tight space.
The round started, and my teammates burst into motion. The window attackers spent piloting drones was the window defenders spent reinforcing the site. One player slapped reinforced panels over the thinner walls. Another laid barbed wire across the floor. Someone else went hunting the drones skittering around like cockroaches.
Bang! Bang!
A shotgun roared, and I turned my head. Someone was blasting a hole in the wall just wide enough for a person to squeeze through — a far cry from the teammates still reinforcing. It wasn't trolling. The room I was in was the CCTV room, the so-called Big Site. Beside it sat the small CCTV room, Small Site. Two objectives: A in Big Site, B in Small Site. A single corridor cut between them, lit in red, which was why everyone called it Red Hall. The player was tearing open the Red Hall wall so we could move between the two rooms without wasting time.
The basement had a quirk: step out the Small Site door and you were staring straight at the parking lot. In a sense, it was the shortest possible route an attacking team could take to the objective. Nobody would come that way, though. The shortest route was also the most heavily watched, and the other side would know it. More than that, smashing the barricade across the entrance meant making noise — there was no way around it. The likeliest approaches were the cave punched through the server room, or a drop from the vault. Slim chance, but they could also rig a rope to the stopped elevator and slide down. They might even blow a reinforced wall and push through that.
There was more to keep track of than I'd expected. As an attacker I'd just walked in without thinking. Flip the sides, and even imagining how the enemy would enter became the start of a mind game.
I planted the Preemptive Defense system in a corner of the objective room first — out of the enemy's sightline, and in a spot that could intercept anything flying in nearby.
Less than ten seconds remained before the round went live, and my teammates only got busier. Behind someone still hunting for a hidden drone, another player peeled off toward a position far from the site, looking to jump anyone who got careless. I thought about following. I also hesitated.
Nothing rattled an opponent's head quite like an ambush they never saw coming. In the chaos, the brain locked up for a beat, and reactions to a surprise attack slowed to a crawl. Done right, I could butcher them by myself. Done wrong, I'd be isolated and dead before I could put up a fight. One death wouldn't swing the round on its own — but rounds had a current. If an ally dropped in the opening seconds, the other side seized the initiative. And the looks you'd get from the rest of the team after wandering off for a flank and dying? Yeah.
Besides, the biggest reason the other team had lost round one was the rush. Most of them had left the site empty and charged, and the defense had holes because of it. This position could eat a fast hit just as easily. Waiting at the site for them to come to us was the smarter play.
Then again, throwing the first punch was safer than sitting still and watching for bullets that could come from anywhere. To get inside the building, they had to make at least some noise. Roaming the map, reading their entry routes, and hitting them first would do the team more good than camping the site and waiting to die.
That was the thought I took with me as I tore up the stairs at a terrifying clip.
"Objective's in the basement. How do we go in?"
"What about rushing the parking lot all at once?"
One of them answered while putting aimed fire into an exterior CCTV camera. Don't rush the parking lot. A sudden smash could rattle the defense and decide the round before they even reacted — but the risk ran just as high. If the other side was ready, you'd be the ones getting wiped. And Unknown was on that team. Ready or not, the moment you ran into Unknown, you were dead.
"I think we should enter through the roof or the second floor and pick them off one by one. There's a monster on their team, so..."
It was the player Unknown had killed in round one. Dodging every pellet from a shotgun at point-blank range hadn't been enough — she'd then put a sniper round into him at close range without even shouldering the rifle. The thought of it still sent a chill through him. That little smile as she lined the sniper up on him was going to live in his memory for a long time.
"Then we split three and three between the first and second floors."
Clear the floor farthest from the bomb first, confirm the area was completely safe, and only then push the site. Slow, with gaps you could drive a truck through — but one of the safest approaches in the book. With an overwhelming monster like Unknown on the other side, the right move was to delete the variables one by one and seal the net shut.
"I'll enter through the second-floor CEO's office."
"Got it. We'll come in through the kitchen, sweep the first floor, and meet at the central stairs."
Splitting the team took no time at all. One group would search the first floor, the other the second, covering each other against a possible ambush. It cost the clock, but it was the most stable way to play. If they cleared the ground floors cleanly, they could even infer where the defenders were sitting. There was no reason to gamble.
Crash!
The barricade went with the window glass, and the noise was louder than expected. This was the last moment before they committed to the building — the part that demanded the most care, because anyone could be waiting inside. After a few hand signals with his teammate, the man tossed a drone through the broken window. It bounced off a wall, hit the floor, and rolled forward under his control.
The drone feed spilled across his phone. No one in the immediate area. He gave a thumbs-up — all clear — and climbed through the window into the kitchen, carbine tucked into the crook of his arm so he could fire on a heartbeat, sweeping the corners. No sound. Either the first floor was empty, or something was sitting in the dark like a predator waiting for prey.
"We're in on first. What's the situation on second?"
He asked over team voice. Nothing came back. Only static hissed in his ear, and he fussed with the comms. Maybe that did the trick.
"Fuck...! Is that even a person?"
The line connected, but all that came through was raw cursing. Even a follow-up question got gunfire instead of an answer. What the hell was happening on the second floor?
The question had barely formed when the match score shifted, as if to answer it for him.
What on earth was going on up there?