Explosion, But Common

"Well, I guess people live around here too."

"In a manner of speaking, yeah."

───Fweeeen!

A burst of light erupted, and a thin membrane of energy swept forward with Harmony at its center.

Enemy positions, headcounts, and weak points bloomed across the UI as the Pulse washed over them. Even those hiding behind walls registered in crisp, unmistakable detail. The corridor leading to the diesel generators — the heart of the backup power facility — was already carpeted in steel and blood.

The objective was simple. Clear every hostile inside, then hack the facility security and seal every door so that no one could enter until the Icarus follow-up support team arrived.

Destruction was off the table, and unless every enemy in this power plant was wiped out, the root problem would never be solved. That left them with no choice but to resort to this stopgap measure.

A soft click sounded as a uniquely shaped launcher settled into Harmony's hands.

A single module no larger than a small stone was mounted on the front. At a glance, its sleek curves and white grip called to mind a personal defense laser from some sci-fi film.

In reality, it was one of the crudest devices among Icarus skill gear — in short, a sticky bomb. Designed more for penetration than raw blast yield, its piercing power was exceptional.

She pulled the trigger. With a dull thunk, the charge flew and stuck to the side of a UGV chassis.

—Paaang!

Rather than a conventional explosion, a sharp flash of light bloomed, and the machine crumpled where it stood, a clean cylindrical hole punched through the point of contact. A concentrated fusion of shaped-charge principles and extreme heat — the technology never failed to do its job.

While Harmony stably neutralized one unit without any major destruction or blast, I kept doing what I'd always done — slamming out .338 armor-piercing rounds and dropping exo-suit assault troopers who tried to sneak in close, right where they stood.

Powered strength assistance meant they could carry heavier loads.

They had poured that surplus capacity into ballistic protection — but unfortunately for them, specially fabricated armor-piercing rounds with depleted uranium cores punched straight through thick ballistic plates and silenced enemies in a single shot.

The same applied to machines. UGVs that couldn't fully abandon mobility had compromised armor, riddled with holes even by 5.56mm AP. What chance did they stand against something far more powerful — a Lapua Magnum?

It didn't take long for the noisy corridor to sink into silence.

"Ah, thank you for the thousand-won donation, MoldOnGarlic. Hmm? Maybe it's because I'm playing with Teacher?"

"Don't hype me up like that. It's embarrassing."

It was a fact no one could deny.

What made Dark Zone entertaining to watch ultimately came down to natural flow. The way completing one objective organically guided you into the next mattered more than people realized.

Put the other way: even with UI guidance, most players still moved passively, muddling through unnecessary detours before halfheartedly setting off toward the next goal. It wasn't that this was bad — it was just everyday life for a mismatched public matchmaking party.

That was the conclusion I'd reached watching YourSpace.

From that angle, the way I guided movement toward the next objective as naturally as breathing probably offered viewers a spectacle with unbroken flow. Something like that, at least.

Before we knew it, Harmony and I had pushed deep into the backup power facility. To guarantee maximum safety against external strikes, the underground sections dwarfed anything above ground.

The surrounding interior carried more of an analog sensibility than cutting-edge tech. Digital systems were applied only where strictly necessary — identity scanners and the like.

Slowly but surely, the enemies were swept away. Even if they only sent personnel to the plant's critical sections, a force amounting to roughly one and a half companies was still a thin deployment. A backup power facility — not the main control center — was always going to have relatively fewer PMC personnel.

As facility authority was overwritten under Icarus control, bulkheads that answered only to their commands began sealing shut, starting from those nearest the entrance. No one except the facility's new masters would be getting out.

But that also meant it had nothing to do with the Artemis personnel steadily massing outside.

The camera mounted on the armed buggy we'd arrived in blared a sharp warning into my ear.

"…Oh. Didn't think of that. It says the outside is packed with enemies."

"Seems so."

Still without any real rise or fall in tone, as if she were hiding something, she added the remark without ever losing her composure.

A crackling voice rode in over the in-com.

It was terribly familiar — though whether I should call it nostalgic, or glad to hear after so long, or whether I ought to greet him with a malicious "been well?" was another matter entirely.

"Hmm."

Former Artemis Tech Director. The high-value person of interest — or high-value prisoner — we'd extracted from New London back when we were hammering the northeastern front, and who, as far as my memory went, was still locked up at Central Park HQ. Callsign: Crow.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It had been a long time since I'd heard that voice, but judging by the chat, Crow was still a walking punchline even here. Which, to be fair, was inevitable.

Honestly speaking, I was more curious about what Race — an old acquaintance of mine connected to this man — was doing right about now, and where.

Of course, that was personal business.

I gave Harmony a couple of taps on the back as she tilted her head, wondering who Crow even was, then spoke.

"Just in case, check whether there's another underground passage leading outside. It should turn up within a few minutes."

"Ah, okay. By the way, are you actually going to go meet them?"

"The bulkheads are thick enough that they won't push through anytime soon, so it's fine. Lend me a hand, if you would."

From the far end of the basement, Harmony and I began climbing back up toward the ground floor.

As always, Dark Zone missions had multiple ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠endings.

Calling them multi-endings was a stretch — they didn't warp the entire subsequent timeline — but depending on the players' skill and how they handled sudden developments, a great many things outside the broad framework could shift.

And from that, not only various routes but a so-called standard route preferred by everyone was more or less guaranteed to emerge.

Take this mission as an example, without needing to look far: on the route Eugene and Harmony were running, the standard play was for one person to use the bulkhead as a shield and nibble away at the enemy force while the other escaped through a different underground path.

Naturally, it wasn't anything special — plenty of others had already walked that route. Which was why the people in chat were cheering other aspects of their play more than the route itself.

With the bulkhead between them, Crow and Eugene faced each other. Both could confirm the silhouette of the person on the other side through their respective methods.

The slight difference: Crow could only confirm that a single person stood beyond the wall, while Eugene saw dozens of enemies preparing to breach on the other side of the bulkhead.

With one side overwhelmingly on the back foot, a half-one-sided conversation began.

And yet.

Unexpectedly, Eugene still wasn't saying a word.

Harmony's voice came through, pressing past the partially noised-over channel. She reported that route scouting was complete and escape path secured in two minutes thirty-seven seconds, and that she was quietly making her way up toward Eugene's position.

One way to ratchet up tension and curiosity was to deliberately hold your tongue. Eugene was executing that with excellence, and it didn't take long for the chat to fill with people demanding to know why there was no response.

The fact that she was rapidly running through firearms safety procedures on one corner of her UI was something no one knew.

Unable to wait out the silence, the voice returned.

In that moment, a cascade of network logs raced up across Eugene's screen.

Her mouth opened for the first time.

"Icarus prefers to resolve things through dialogue with cooperative parties whenever possible, but…"

Whirrr.

And a hand signal — the one that meant arm up and aim forward — floated into Harmony's field of view, while a message composed by thought alone was transmitted.

When the timing came, plant a sticky bomb into the grenade box at the rear of the vehicle.

As Eugene quietly retreated, her view shifted to the outside — converting into the grenade launcher's sight picture. The launcher, switched to rapid-fire mode, was already trained on what had once been teammates, without anyone knowing.

The moment she ducked behind the wall, the words continued.

"People who seize a facility of national critical importance and then try to negotiate are not usually called intellectuals. They're called terrorists."

And then there was light.

And a fair amount of explosion, too.

───Thud-thud-thud-thud-thoom!

Crackle-zzzt!

As communications cut out all at once, a colossal vibration and roar that seemed ready to shatter the bulkhead itself thundered in from beyond the door.

A catastrophe among catastrophes, born of the fact that no one had paid any attention to the armed buggy they'd rammed into an enemy vehicle, then shoved by hand into a rough parking spot nearby. Still linked, of course, it could be remotely controlled the moment it came back within range.

In other words, Eugene was massacring the surrounding enemies from behind a wall without any real effort at all.

But there were simply too many enemies around.

In just a few attacks, nearly twenty hostiles had been converted to the past tense. Even so, roughly that many still remained, and those whose lives hung by a thread responded with immediate return fire driven by pure survival instinct.

Countless rounds, grenades, even missiles streaked toward the armed buggy. Not to be outdone, the VFFS scattered grenades in every direction, determined to drag at least one more soul to hell — and then the sirens on the outer wall wailed as the bulkhead opened.

The engine roared to life and the armed buggy lurched into motion, and right then it entered Harmony's line of sight.

She instinctively knew this was the timing Eugene had mentioned.

—Thoom!

A sticky bomb planted dead-center into a drum packed full of grenades. It wouldn't detonate until Harmony pulled the trigger again.

In mere seconds, the armed buggy became a moving bomb vehicle with a zero-to-sixty of three seconds, and Eugene drove it without hesitation straight into the densest cluster of enemies.

A heavy thud carried through the open bulkhead.

Harmony recognized it as the second signal.

The moment her tiny finger moved, the sticky bomb detonated.

───Click.

Kuuung.

The high-performance shaped charge mounted on the front blasted a metal jet mixed with wind at ten kilometers per second straight ahead, and then a specially engineered mixture of thermite, C4, and other compounds combusted inside a purpose-designed cylinder, radiating extreme heat of five thousand degrees across the front.

The drum's detonation was inevitable.

And so, an explosion larger than anything they'd seen yet came crashing down.

"Whoa."

It was a moment of pure awe — neither a scream nor a cry of shock — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that painted the air alongside the flames.