A brush with death

  “Nuke, move toward that MG,” Mack said on the s.

  “Great.”

  “Don’t bellyache. The moment you take fire, hunker down and sit tight. Sulphyr and I will move up to hit it and we bound off each other until we’ve got the fuckers surrounded.”

  On the mini-map, Gradie saw Sulphyr and Maverick’s ioving toward the undry room at the bottom of the chute.

  “I think we’re gonna move to the courtyard,” Nova pihe big circle at the ter of the penthouse square, where a strange symbol that looked like an octopus or something was surrounded by small paths.

  “There’s a staircase we use. Plus the tree will s us from the MGs.” Nova drew lines from the top two ers of the map and showed how the big tree in the courtyard would s the stairs between the back of the lounge/bar and the courtyard.

  “Will it though?” Luke sounded skeptical.

  “Yeah bro, it’s like the god damned Deku tree.”

  “Oh, well in that case, let’s look out for Skultus and shit and then move here.” Luke drew a line from the bottom side of the courtyard up around to the top of the map, right betweewo MGs.

  “Make em think twice before pulling the trigger.”

  “Fug ballsy but it might work,” said Maverick. “Fuck it, let’s do it. But we gotta move now.”

  Nuke sighed and got to her feet. Gradie moved to get behind her and a prompt reminded him to loot Mack’s body frenades ara ammo.

  “Get in tight.” She advised him, and he was gd Mack wasn’t around, though something that felt like the telepathic edges of a snicker wafted over the group s. He pressed in close and tapped her with one hand on one of the few portions of soft armor just above her hip.

  They marched in a half crouch with ons ready, past crumpled showers and spraying walls towards a door in the back that slid open right as they got within three feet of it. Nuke jumped back hard into Gradie.

  “It’s just me,” Nova said on the s.”

  “Jesus,” Nuke hissed, and stepped through the door.

  It hit him like being suddenly turned upside down. Nostalgia. Disorientation. Like falling through one part of a dream into ahat was trying to pass as waking life.

  The pool stretched out longways from where they stood clear to the far end about fifty meters away, where doorways to locker rooms waited in a white wall between the shadows of diving boards. The diving blocks, rounded pnks on wire thin supports in this universe, were arranged in front of him, waiting. The high dive, looking as space age as the blocks with its ptforms suspended on near invisibly thial, loomed above the ter of the mirror still surface where the two movable plexigss walkways blocked in what he knew was the deepest portion, twenty-five meters down the length. One wall of the natatorium was a solid gss window, while the other was a terrace of silver bleachers looking down ss railing at the ground floor where tile shimmered and folding chairs sat empty. Despite the minor tweaks to the fixtures, the only thing truly Sci-Fi about the entire space was the view out the tall windows, where space-opera towers smoked and ser beams fshed in the sinking twilight distance. He focused on that fantastic sery until the p pool from his childhood sunk back down into memory and there was only this copy, pced before him like a hollow easter egg.

  In his shock, the gap between him and Nuke had widened, aook two quick steps to catch up. She led him to the right towards the bleachers and a mirror world floated across the pool in that way he had always loved.

  “I don’t like this,” Nuke said.

  “’t swim?” Gradie said, hoping to mask whatever the fuck was going on with him.

  “Ha, no, I mean those windows. Quasar, you sure they don’t have eyes—”

  In ahe far wall exploded. The now familiar rapid-fire ser-like tracers ripped through a door and danced around Nuke and Gradie, kig up so much tile and rubber slip-mat that Gradie thought they were about to get dropped through the floor.

  “Ahh go!” Nuke yelled, and for a moment, Gradie stood there, watg everything disie, w where the fuck she expected him to go to, while also w, in a wordless, guttural way, as if his skin itself was the one having the intellectual crisis, if the pain of being ripped apart by the MG would be like the pain of being shot in the calf multiplied a thousand times, until Nuke reached around and grabbed him by that always ve handle on the back of his armor, and drug them both into the pool.

  The makers had not takeime, or had been uo think of a way, to make the inside of the pool look any different from an Olympigth pool in the Real. The night vision fun of his helmet, rather than being a monoe green or blue, rendered everything in a natural full moon night un-darkness, and the blue tile Ts at the far end, the slope, the mirrored reverse of itself wavering above them, created the sensation, for just a moment, that he had fallen straight through in to the Real, or at least into the Hardworlds.

  Then Nuke’s armored form floated out of the pilr of bubbles caused by her plunge, and the MG raked the surface with a burst that sent glowing sudsy lines of ser bullet-paths slig through the water. One round struuke’s chest pte with a soft harmless “thunk” that echoed in the pool, and Gradie realized the rounds had their speed reduced to that of aic overhand throw.

  hrew her arms up in a stroke and propelled herself down to the bottom of the pool and Gradie followed, the ral buoyancy of his suit fighting against him. More rounds struck the water and their paths fizzled out int s of circur bubble clusters, not unlike ne ropes, and the sounds of the impacts and the echo of the gun above were softened by the water, so that it felt like he had entered a dimension where nothing harsh or violent could ever persist. A wave of déjà vu washed over him from the way the sensation of the water was kept out by the suit, but he had no idea why.

  “Mav, look alive,” Nova said. “You got drones ing your way.”

  “I don’t hem.”

  “Not mine!”

  “What the fuck! Thought you had their tech locked down.”

  “Deployed from the roof. ’t get my tech up there yet. Don’t panic, just sit tight. My flyers are loaded with lightning plus.”

  “What the fuck—”

  “Dogfighting software! Just give me a sed!”

  The mae gun fire had stopped. Gradie followed oward the far side of the pool in a slow, floating march. It was calm and uedly beautiful, as things sometimes were in the diorama worlds of Gunmaze, until something small, dark, aal dropped into the water on the far side and sunk straight to the bottom as a drone flew by overhead.

  “Quasar,” arted, but the strange bass boosted boom cut her off. There was a bright fsh that ballooned into a swarm of bubbles rising up in a pilr toward the surface. A few seds ter, the echoes faded and a strange gurgling noise filled in the sile grew into the sound of rushing distant water, not unlike a bathtub being drained in the room.

  Lights fshed above the warbling silver surface of the water and gunshots echoed.

  “Quasar,” Nuke said again.

  “One sed!” Nova hissed. Something else dropped into the pool with a thunk and Nuke squeaked and jumped backward, the water turning her panicked motion into a slow-mo backwards float that her bulbous armave a ical snt.

  The thing desded in a chute of bubbles and ked again on the pool floor. A broken drone.

  “I’m clearing the fug skies,” Nova said.

  “We’re moving on that MG,” Maverick said, and Gradie saw three is, him, Sulphyr, and Mack, moving through an area beled “DINING” oher side of the kill-hall from the pool.

  “And just a heads up, be extra cautious. HQ andeered our e station at the base temporarily—”

  “What the fuck!” Robin said.

  “They needed bodies for a supply run. We will get it bace—”

  “But they ’t give us fug air support!”

  “I told you, this pce is stuffed with anti-air.”

  “Which Quasar has mostly fried now anyway!”

  “Dammit Robin, we have to make do with—”

  The MG cut him off. Nuke went turtle mode as a reflex, but the gunfire was distant and muffled, and none of the rounds broke the shimmering surface of the water.

  “Taking fire!” Maverick yelled, and Gradie saw the three is of Maverick's e squad spread out perpendicur to the line of fire. For Otherwamers, they had det tactics.

  “Mouseholes go both ways, assholes!” Sulphyr yelled, and Gradie saw his i light up as another, fainter mae gun sound joined in.

  “Nuke! Move up!” Maverick said, his adrenaline bleeding through the mental s, iing Gradie with an itch to be out of the l water. The surface was desding on them like a tin foil ceiling in a slow colpse.

  “I’ll pop nano smoke, one seova said. A drone moved by over them, a distorted bck smear the size of a small bird. The pop of the grenade was the softest sound Gradie had heard yet, like a f voice, and the edge of the water darkened like ink spreading across paper.

  “Moving!” Nuke said, her voice filled with aement that reminded Gradie none of this was real and that fear was foolishness in a shootout where no one died, though the dull twinge in his calf reminded him that it might not all be fun and games if the MG found its mark.

  omped over to a dder in the side wall and pulled herself up with a groan of stressed metal. Gradie waited behind her until she s him.

  “Grab onto me and jump the fuck up there! Your jump suit!”

  Gradie let his rifle swing down, which felt like an invitation for some phantom Philip to float out of the air and kick him, and pulled himself up towards Nuke’s shoulders, now clearing the water. However the jump suit worked, it didn’t activate until he was clear of the surface, and the sudden ued and still unfamiliar force rocketing him upward sent him filing up onto the deck, where he nded in a half roll onto his side.

  As Nuke cleared the water, the deck around the dder posts cracked and groaned, but didn’t give. She stomped up onto the tile, dripping water off her bck armor like oil, grenade uncher already aimed at the spreading smoke. Gradie rolled up and got into formation behind her, one hand on her handle, and had to once again respect his new allies' training. How many Hardworlders were headhunted from Gunmaze junkies, he wondered?

  She took two steps before the MG fire shot out of the smoke.

  “Shit!” she squealed, and turtled so fast that her head dropped two feet in an instant, exposing Gradie to the stream of fire.

  “Dammit!” He snapped down into a crouch as the ded water around him came alive.

  “Moving!” Maverick said, and the three is in the dining area wasted no time in taking advantage of the MG switg targets. They moved in what must have been a full sprint into the area belled GYM.

  “Nuke, move up! He’s firing blind!” Nova said. Gradie looked around him and saw what he meant. The fire was raking the eatorium, though fog mostly on the smoke on the far side of the deck, where the exit door y hidden. After a few seds, Gradie noticed something else. Though the MG itself was now firing some kind of tracerless, non-infra-red-refleg rounds invisible to even his space-age nightvision, the impacts of the rounds let him track the field of fire, and there were some gaping holes in it.

  “Nuke, move to that er!” He pointed with his rifle.

  “Fuck you!”

  “He’s firing through mouseholes! That’s one of his blind spots!”

  “He’s right Nuke!” Nova said.

  “Ahhh!” Nuke de-turtled with a groan and shot off toward the far er of the deck, almost leaving Gradie behind. Like a sudden spot of shade on a hot day, the MG fire became a distant suggestion as they stepped onto the oblong shape of detouched by impacts.

  “That smoke didn’t do shit!” she yelled.

  “You’re alive aren’t you? And he’s got eyes somewhere on the skyline. Wait one sec, gonna smoke the whole room.”

  Another drone whizzed by and there o the floor to ceiling windows across the pool and more bck sparkling smoke spread out in a cloud.

  “How am I supposed to see where I’m going?” Nuke said, as the first cloud of smoke flowed over them, and everything disappeared. Gradie held tight to her handle.

  “The HUD, remember?” Nova said, and a glowing yellow overy, like a 3d blueprint, appeared on their HUD. There was even a fshing arrow path on the ground.

  “I mapped his blind-spots. You should be good to push him.”

  “Should be,” Nuke growled.

  Like a flipped switch, the MG fire stopped and picked up again in the far room.

  “Fuck! I’m Hit!” Mack yelled on the s, and something bled through that told Gradie his fears of real pain in this pce were far from unwarranted.

  Indoor pools are special to him. ace would immediately make you think of your real life? ime, see how the other half dies. episode, Penthouse.