Nerf UAV plz

  The stream of death sliced over their heads like a blind sprinkler and they nded into hard rolls on the carpet below, or in Luke’s case, right through a table.

  The gu off suddenly and the whine of the drone faded away as it vanished past the window’s edge.

  “Yall good?” It was Nova on the s.

  “Up,” Gradie and Luke said in unison, and they both started instinctively cheg themselves for wounds then stopped and shared a ugh.

  “The fuck did yall two go?” Luke asked.

  On queue, a piece of the wall below the upper level they had leapt from smoked and smoldered and colpsed outward. Aepped out with his rad thrlowing and Nova skipped out behind him, staring at his forearm. Luke busted out ughing.

  “Shit, that’s what you meant by get down? I didn’t think to gh the fug floor!”

  “Robin, you up!” Nova said.

  “Fuck yes! Where is it?”

  “It’s a quarter mile up, sing. But my birds are jamming it, its gonna have to—”

  The mae gun atop the stairs started up again, and everyone scattered. Luke and Gradie aimed up the stairs and stepped up to the wall until their lower halves were obscured by the level, then started firing.

  The rifle’s rate of fire was somewhere between an M416 and an FN mini-mini, and the recoil was simir to his X95. Some things shot out of the side like shell gs, but they were about a quarter of the size of any rifle gs he knew of and nded soundlessly on the carpet after floating down like leaves.

  Gradie noticed a gauge in the lower part of his s, indig that while his gun had a ridiculous ammo t in the hundreds per mag, it would overheat in sustained fire.

  “Talk with me!” he told Luke on the s, and started firing in alternate one sed bursts of fire and pause. Luke picked up the gaps and they y into the general area of the mae gun with a steady stream of fire that was joined by one of Nukes Grenades.

  “Reloading!” Sulphyr yelled somewhere.

  “Drone ing around!” Nova yelled “Sword, cut them some cover! Robin, tune your—”

  “I’m on it!!”

  Gradie had paused his fire to take out his and Luke’s cover packs, whifolded with a snap, and noticed Bled Robin doing something with her massive on. The metal exterior rearranged like a jigsaw, briefly exposing a bright glowing core inside.

  “Fuck this!” Luke said and grabbed his cover mesh and ran in the hole in the wall Angel had just finished cutting. Sulphyr and Nova booked it after him and Gradie scrambled in behind.

  Ihey fanned out across the crete and stainless steel ste room, where extra tables and chairs and even what looked like an old popae y sleeping in dust.

  “Look out below!” Nuke said on the s, and fell down through the ragged opening in the ceiling cut by the drone. She sat down hard on a kit isnd and rolled sideways onto the ground.

  “Damhick!” Sulphyr said.

  “Bro, really, again?” Angel said.

  Nuke poi Sulphyr and jumped around.

  “Pay up! Pay up!”

  “Mavericks dead!” Sulphyr hissed.

  “Fuck that!” Maverick said on the s. “You know the rules. 50 tokens every time you make that stupid fug joke!”

  Robin nded gracefully in the room and aimed her on outside.

  “Nuke! e here! Empt!”

  Nuke jogged over to Robin and got into a low crou front of her. Robi her on on Nuke’s shoulder and they stepped toward the opening.

  “Yall get to cover!” Nova waved his arm at the rest of them without taking his eyes off his forearm. He was crouched down behind his own cover mesh which Gradie couldn’t help but notice was a different color than his and seemed to have extra yers of some kind of clear gss.

  The whine of the drone ged tone and got louder. Having nothing else to do, Gradie crouched down behind his cover mesh and aimed his rifle at the wall.

  “Gradie! e here!” Luke said in a whisper tone on the private s. Gradie looked bad Luke waved him towards a er of the room where some kind of chest high freezer was, and got on top of it and put his mesh cover in front of him. Gradie ughed out loud, as the death sound of the drone roared outside and Luke snuggled into pce behind the mesh. It was the most video game-esque thing he had seen sihey left Colors.

  But he followed him anyway. As he was climbing up, Nova hissed oeam s.

  “He’s dropping down! Charge it!”

  Robin’s ade a sound like a dive bomber and started to glow in pces.

  “Tagging him!” Nova said, and the drone popped up on the mini map. There was a burst of guside, and the drone disappeared off the map.

  “Shit!” Nova said. “Ok, he should be ing from the –”

  “SHHHH!” Robin said out loud, and the only er was the dros engine rising and falling as it zipped around outside like a looking for an opening. Robin tapped Nuke on the head and they both walked carefully toward the opening. There was a brief pause, as Gradie rearranged himself on the freezer, getting his cover flush with Luke’s, and the engine sound normalized and grew at a steady pace, thehing happe once.

  Robin’s o off with a “tchoooo” sound, Nuke snapped into her pressed turtle form, the walls, ceiling and ground around them exploded, and the drone’s engine shifted in pitd made a strange grinding sound.

  “Got it!” Nova said. “Ok, hold on, hold on,” He was typing frantically on a keybradie couldn’t see. The engine noise faded to nothing so suddenly, he thought it might have exploded, but as it persisted in a muted far away tone, he realized the thing had just zipped off at an unimaginable speed.

  Robin spped Nuke’s bad she popped out of her turtle form and stepped backward at an angle while Robi her on aimed out the now much wider opening in the wall.

  “Ok, I got in through one of the cameras. Trying to crack the timing software. Shit. One sed.”

  The drone’s jets screamed like a thing attacked, and Gradie didn’t even have to see it to know it was diving in.

  “Call it!” Robin yelled, jerking her on bad forth, seeking for the droside, and finding nothing.

  “Shit it’s too high,” Nova said. “Yonna have to move—”

  The ceiling exploded and the drone shrieked. The room dissolved into bursts of dust and crete and the st Gradie saw of Sulphyr and the twins, they were running in three opposite dires. Somewhere in the dim haze, something fshed and spit gunfire and for a moment Gradie thought it was the drone’s rounds ricocheting off something, but then Sulphyr started yelling out loud.

  “Mother fug toy using piece of shit!” He y into his LMG food three seds as the drone’s fire ripped the room around him to dust, and then he exploded, and the drones on roar echoed half a sed ter.

  “Shit!” Someone yelled and Gradie felt another body hop onto the freezer o him.

  In an instant, the world went silent, besides the zy buzzing of the drone somewhere out the window.

  “It’s h,” Nova said on the group s. “Looking fns of life. Fuck! It cleared my worms out of the fuel system!”

  The dust started to clear, and three big blotches of evening sunlight poured in through the broken ceiling.

  “I need someoo draw its attention. Just for a sed!” Robin said.

  “Shit, I’m not busy,” said Luke, and he hopped off the freezer and jogged away with his cover mesh in one hand and his rifle iher.

  “Just get it to turn and then run!” Robin hissed. Luke held his mesh cover up like an old hoplite shield aed his rifle on it as he dissolved into the dust. A few seds ter, his silhouette appeared, outlined by the light ing through the hole in the far side of the room.

  “There you are. Hey Buddy,” he said softly, and fired. Immediately, the drones engine shifted up in pitd half a sed ter the ceiling above Luke exploded down on him in a burst of gunfire.

  At the same time, Robin had stepped out into the soft patch of evening light, and Nuke scrambled to get in front of her. The ser o off and red neon lit up every piece of dust in the room and reflected off mirror metal surfaces that till then had been ying unseen in the murk. The beam shot out into the light and held steady like a spotlight. It was a surreal sight that took the experience suddenly beyond video game or movie, and for a moment the causal liween the Real, the Other, and even the rest of Gunmaze, with this uny moment, broke apart, and he felt that what he was seeing was really happening on some other world yet undiscovered.

  “Got it!” Nova yelled. “You melted an engine!”

  “I see that!” Robin yelled, and began pulsing the ser. The drones engine whine became an oscilting kick drum like hat could only mean it inning untrolbly.

  “Oh shit. It armed its payload,” Nova said.

  “ayload?” Robin yelled.

  “Get out!” Angel screamed, surprisingly close to Gradie, and his rad thrreen glow lit up the wall o the freezer.

  Then, suddenly, with a noise like the power surges in Gradie’s old apartment whenever someo a pole, the dro silent.

  “Was that it?” Luke asked, stepping out of the haze. “Where’s the boom?”

  “Pilot killed its kamikaze mode,” Nova said. “Guess they thought better about setting a bomb off in a building they’re stu since I was knog oeering software anyway.” He typed frantically on his invisible keyboard, and the wind blew zily out ierra.

  “I’m in position,” Mack said on the s. “Whetin this pill box bitch?”

  “One sed!” Nova said, annoyed. “I gotta finish breaking into their systems.”

  Watg Nova sit and type, while one of his drones flew out the door and another climbed over to a hole in the wall and cmped onto a piece of exposed cable, Gradie was suddenly reminded of EP, and by extension, the Hardworlds. Like someone had flicked on a light, this wrew dim again, and like a jurying to distract himself from his craving, he asked out loud,

  “Is it like actual hag, or like a mini game?”

  “Somewhere iween,” Robin said on the s, and the chat window on the HUD lit up in a way that told him she had muted herself to Nova. Gradie quickly did the same thing, as Nova typed away, frowning.

  “Most of the actual programming is done by software in the game,” she tinued. “Its mostly memorizing rograms trump what and knowing when to cobble something together from the pieces. Some p sowledge help at times, but I’ve seen a lot of people pick it up who couldn’t even open a and prompt in the Real.”

  Who is this person, Gradie asked himself. Who is she in the Real? He studied her face, but got nothing. A frozen proje under a gss visor. Like an itch, he tried to guess what any of them were like in the Real, what they might say to him, how they might act, would Nuke smile at him, would the twins have anything to say to him at all?

  “Fuck, ok.” Nova sighed. “I got two in. Gonna leave them dormant for now. Lets deal with the MG and maybe I get another access point closer to the penthouses.”

  He stood up and everyoarted swinging ons around aing in stances. Robin spped her on and half of it swung open on hihen broke apart and reformed. An info pop-up in Gradie’s HUD told him she was now in “anti personnel” mode, and listed a circle graph of her strengths and weaknesses. He tabbed over to his own, and saw that he, like Luke, was squarely in the middle. Run of the mill grunts. An AR and two grenades.

  So be it. If there was ohing he was sure of, it was that whoever was waiting in the penthouse, he and Luke would outshoot them.

  In the back of his mind, the Hardworlds called, and he prayed the space age MG oairs would drown them out soon.

  Will Gradie finally make some friends outside of his team, or is the current radery short-lived? ime, the MG must be dealt with. episode, Gatecrashers.