Fueled up, unmanned, unbothered, thriving

  They fanned out across the wide carpeted space, which curved to the left and gave way to a wide-open drop to the right.

  There was absolutely no good cover that he could see. The crest of carpet was dotted with dining tables with the chairs banced on top. The railing at the edge was clear gss, and beyond the drop, down past two more terraced levels where couches and bar kiosks promised some kind of high css interspace shindig, the massive velvet staircase that ran down the ter of the slope e the bottom floor, which was solid polished marble aended out into a wide baly through the massive floor to ceiling window wall, which was a good five stories tall, half a football field wide, and gave an admittedly geous view to the city stretg out toward the horizon, which glittered with the faint motion of seawater, and the hundred ne half-pipe highway which Gradie remembered they were here to shell.

  As the city approached the highway, the buildings gressively more bombed out, with those o it stig up jaggedly like the broken off stumps of snapped matches, but here, closer to the tower, the city seemed retively untouched.

  He ted three towers close enough for sniper fire. Suddenly, something exploded far away behind them, and the bst was reflected sharply on a small se of the ower.

  Immediately, Gradie felt exposed and crossed over to the high wall rising to his left. If the stairs and elevators were death traps, then what the fuck was this?

  “All right you mother fuckers,” Maverick whispered out loud. “e out and say high.”

  “Don’t fet,” Angel said on the group s. “You have a standing shield in your kit, in case you need some extra cover.”

  “Extra?” Luke said sarcastically, pointing his helmet around at all the bare ground.

  “Yeah, here.” Angel must have pi, because Gradies HUD lit up with a notification about something in his iory. He mentally activated it and something on his belt glowed bright green. He imagined a sniper using it to get a bead and turo point it at the wall, until he realized the glorobably only in his HUD.

  He moved one hand down and grabbed the ft case hooked to his belt over his left hip. It had a handle like a clothes iron, and in a fsh, as Gunmaze used the dream knowledge burst of mem (which for the game was described on his s as “uploadable memory”) to show him how to deploy it. He half-saw, half-remembered a quick flick of the wrist with the handle in hand, and a strange mesh like a mosquito reinforced with umbrel wire expanding into a standing half domed shield, like a short podium made of window s.

  “What will it stop?” Gradie asked.

  “Most rounds, actually,” Angel said. “But if it gets too much at ol snap. And a good explosion will just knock it into you, of course.”

  “Moving up,” Maverick said on the group s. “Sulphyr, Nuke, on me. Watch top of stairs.” He motioned with his hand, and Nuke, who up till then had been walking with Gradie like they were the only two shooters in the building, waved at him and jogged up to the front, where Maverick was fag up the massive tral staircase toward the top level.

  Sulphyr raised his LMG and Nuke raised her grenade uncher (Gradie had figured out how to browse info oeams gear via his helmet puter) and the rest of them formed into a v formation pointed up the stairs, and started the ast to the level.

  It was an amusing sight, the eight armored and armed death maes marg up the blue velvet stairs, pointing their deep-space grimdark ons at sleeping dinis and eye-roll-indug art pieces and shuttered bars. His imagination ran off, and he saw the rolling parties flowing dowairs like a colored metallic waterfall, all kinds of es and people, and aliens, like a fan vention with an endless budget, but then it occured to him that there had probably never actually been any parties here, that this pce was made solely to be blown to pieces, but then, why hadn’t that happened yet? The twins spoke of this gameworld as being out a long time, so what? Did they reset the city after a certain level of destru? Was it a weekly—

  “Shit, got something,” Nova said. The party came to a stop and got low. Gradie cussed at himself in his head. About a thousand times in the clubhouse, he had spaced out on some daydream, and Philip or someone had gotten the drop on him, not to mention the close calls in the Hardworlds. Once, he was sure Philip had figured out what was going on, and told him,

  “Focus on your sensations, the feel of the gun, the ground under your feet, the air on your skin, you know, the skin I'm going to shoot to pieces if you—”

  It was often like being pulled in two dires. His imagination had often saved him, and had arguably been the only thing that had helped him find the when stoically digging through boxes proved useless, but it could also get him killed, and in the clubhouse, usually got him shot. If he could find a bance, if he could trol it…

  The team tinued and half his mind listened.

  “Ping it,” Maverick hissed pointlessly, as Nova was already sharing his feed. Something was flying out of the top penthouse, fast.

  “Gun drone!” Maverick said. He turo Robin. “Tune your ser to—”

  The top level exploded, and an instahe air was alive in an almost familiar way.

  The st terrace at the top of the tral staircase held a double level of elevator bays, the top one opening onto a catwalk that ed around and came down as two fan shaped staircases on the side. There was a single marble staircase in the ter which bisected the elevator levels and ended in a rge double door on a third level that acc to the map led to the penthouses. It was this door that had exploded in a burst of thick woments, and now revealed a shielded mae gu letting lose like a mother fucker.

  Cover!” Nova yelled, and the team scattered in a fsh, some moving with meically enhanced speed, and the rest bolting at the edge of human ability.

  Luke spped Gradie on the back as he bolted for the erpendicur to the tral staircase, and Gradie sprinted after him.

  The mae gun had arical too it, like a minigun on an A10 mixed with a blown transformer, and the rounds, whatever they were, cracked through the air like bullets, but also hissed like rockets and buzzed like a pair of toy mags. The staircase and the railing and everything else shattered and puffed and bleart in such a real and unimaginable way that the idea that everything around him was made of imaginations and wishes evaporated from Gradies mind and he went bolting after Luke.

  “Sulphyr! Supress that piece of shit!” Maverick said on the s, a strange even sound that floated uhe deafening gunfire. Sulphyr threw himself prone iaircase with his LMG aimed up the stairs and a mesh pte expanded around the barrel, leaving him a thin slit for vision, and he smmed origger. It was a simir meical sound to its sibling gun, but the rounds didn’t glow and its roar was less saw than helicopter.

  The MG at the top didn’t even flinch, and calmly walked its fire over towards Sulphyr’s position.

  “Explosives out!!” Nuke yelled, in a voice that was halfway to a death growl. Her grenade uncher made a rapid-fire pomp-poomp-poomp noise and a trio of explosions bsted the top level into a cloud of marble flechetes. The fire paused temporarily.

  “I’m fnking that mother fucker!” Mack said on the s, and Gradie watched dumfounded as he activated his halfmoon pistol things, which glowed like arc lights, and used them to climb up the wall onto the level.

  “Get the fuck down!” Nova yelled, and for a moment Gradie thought he was talking to Mack, until the five-story high window exploded inward.

  If the top of the stairs MG sounded like a minigun, the guns on the drone sounded like a robot’s scream skippiedly on a d bsted over about a hundred cert amps. The sound was so loud, for a moment Gradie thought it was the noise alohat had shattered the window, but then the rounds started chopping up the terrace.

  The drone was about the size of a kayak, with two rotating mae guns oher side of its main fusege, and a single barrel, which reminded Gradie, for some reason, of a leaf blower, stig out of the ter. It had dual jet engines, currently aiming down, bsting hot psma and waves of heat that, bined with the muzzle bst of its dual guns, made it look like a hummingbird with wings of molteal.

  “Get behind me!” Nuke yelled, and surprisingly, Maverid Bled Robin scrambled to do exactly that, while Sulphyr whipped his LMG around and opened fire.

  As the dro farther across in its deadly ard the wave of destru tearing the terrace level to shreds approached them, Robin slid to a stop behind Nuke, who did something that Gradie at first thought was squatting, until his brain caught up with what his eyes were seeing.

  She had pressed herself into a shorter, even squattier shape, ahick metal ptes melded together, as she froze pletely still.

  Gradie ughed out loud, which was unfortunate, because tragedy soon followed.

  Maverick at first tried to squeeze io Robin, who was hunched in a ball between Sulphyr’s legs, but seeing that it was hopeless, turned and ran right towards the edge of the terrace, bsting his strange shotgun at the drone, which shook of the explosive slugs and Sulphyr’s LMG fire in sparks off its fusege, a on firing.

  In slow motion, the wave of shredding carpet aal washed over him and took on a pinkish hue. Then, as the stream of bullets was just about to meet he barrel in the ter of the drone fshed, and Sulphyr and the two girls disappeared in a massive explosion.

  “Fug sick,” Luke said, in a casual tohat disturbed Gradie just as it had before in the Hardworlds, until he realized none of the death in front of him was even half as real as all that.

  But his apathy at the team’s demise did not quite extend to himself.

  “Shit! Move!” Luke grabbed Gradie by the handle again and pulled him up into a sprint. The world exploded behind him as the bullets and greorm caught up with them.

  “Fuck it! Jump!” Luke yelled and pulled Gradie with him in a suddeurn right towards the edge of the terrace. Gradie got the idea a moment before the ground ran out, and sprinted off the edge.

  There's no respawn in the Hardworlds. ime, csh in the skies. episode, Birds of Prey.