Badge of the Death Game

Chapter 008

The room was exactly as he'd left it.

Same cracked ceiling. Same smell of mildew and stale air. Same cold floor pressing through the thin fabric of his shirt. Soren opened his eyes slowly, and for a moment he simply lay there, taking inventory of the silence.

The panic that had seized him the first time he'd woken up in this place was gone. What remained in its place was something quieter and considerably more useful. A man who had died once and come back had a different relationship with fear than a man who hadn't. He'd paid for that education in the hardest currency available, and he intended to get full value from it.

The HUD appeared before he'd finished the thought.

【Career Instance concluded.】

【Mission settlement complete.】

【Congratulations on completing all mission achievements.】

【You have received four Career Points and one Delta Team Support Card.】

【Your next Career Instance will begin in seven days. Please prepare accordingly.】

He read through the settlement summary twice, letting the numbers settle.

【Name: Soren Ashcroft】

【Occupation: SWAT Special Weapons and Tactics Team Member / Scammer】

【Career Skills: Keen Observation LV3 / Police Takedown LV3 / Combat Striking LV3 / Firearms Proficiency LV2 / Marksmanship LV3 / Vehicle Operation LV2 / Deception Arts LV1 / Police CQB Tactics LV2】

【Career Points: 4】

【Special Item: Delta Team Support Card】

The occupation line had changed. Where it had previously listed Police Officer, it now read SWAT team member. He'd earned that in the field, one floor at a time, and the system had updated its records accordingly.

He turned his attention to the Delta Team Support Card.

【Delta Team Support Card: Single-use item. Upon activation, summons the Harborgate Police Department SWAT Delta Team from the Career Instance into reality to provide fire support. Team members remain present for two hours.】

Soren stared at that last line for a long moment.

Two hours.

He knew exactly what Delta Team was capable of. He'd watched them work for the better part of a day, seen the way they moved through a building, the way they communicated without speaking, the way they absorbed chaos and returned order. Against untrained gunmen, they would be devastating. Against the guards running security in this scam compound, they would be more than enough.

But two hours wasn't much time to extract a person from a facility of this size, especially without heavy support, especially if the compound's security was as extensive as the fragments of the original host's memory suggested. A straight firefight from inside to the perimeter and out would be a close thing under the best circumstances.

"Two hours might be cutting it tight," he said quietly to the empty room.

He filed the card away as a last resort and shifted his attention to the Career Points.

Each skill in his panel now displayed a small gold indicator showing the cost to upgrade. The math was straightforward: LV1 skills cost one point to advance, LV2 skills cost two, LV3 skills cost three. Four points, allocated carefully, could move two LV2 skills forward, or push one LV3 skill to LV4, or upgrade Police CQB Tactics from LV2 to LV3 for three points and bank the remainder.

He didn't deliberate long. Police CQB Tactics went first.

The upgrade landed like a wave breaking over him, a sudden expansion of spatial awareness that was difficult to describe in any terms that didn't sound impractical. The room around him resolved into a tactical diagram: optimal shooting positions marked themselves against the walls, cover angles clarified, the geometry of the space became legible in a way it hadn't been thirty seconds ago. He blinked, and the overlay settled into the background of his perception, available without demanding attention.

He thought back through the fights in the instance and measured himself against what he remembered of Delta Six, the newest and least experienced member of Delta Team. The gap between them had closed considerably. Strip away the unit-specific training and the years of accumulated field time, and what remained was a baseline that Soren could now match. He wasn't Delta One. He wasn't close to Delta One. But he was no longer a man pretending to belong in that stack.

That left one Career Point in reserve, and he intended to keep it there. The remaining choices, Firearms Proficiency or Vehicle Operation, both had merit, but the right answer depended on what the escape actually looked like. If it came down to a firefight, Firearms Proficiency was the obvious call. If there was a vehicle involved, Vehicle Operation would matter more. He'd decide when he had enough information to decide correctly.

A sound from the corridor pulled him back to the present. Two sets of footsteps, one heavier than the other, moving toward the door. Soren closed his eyes and let his breathing slow to the rhythm of sleep.

The iron-barred door scraped open.

Someone was pushed through it, stumbling slightly on the threshold, and the guard's voice followed them in with the flat, practiced menace of a man who had delivered this particular speech many times.

"In you go. This is your room now. Remember: you start work tomorrow. Three months, no results, and you end up like the one in the corner."

The new arrival bent forward slightly, hands clasped, voice pitched at exactly the right register of deference. "Yes, yes, of course. You have my word. I won't let you down."

"See that you don't."

The guard's eyes moved to Soren's corner. He studied the motionless figure for a moment, noted the slow, even rise and fall of the chest, and apparently decided that a man breathing that steadily wasn't worth the effort of further investigation. The door scraped shut. The footsteps receded down the corridor.

Soren opened his eyes.

The new arrival was young, somewhere in his mid-twenties, with the kind of face that defaulted to an easy smile even when the circumstances didn't warrant one. He was wearing civilian clothes that had seen better days, and he was looking at Soren with the cautious, hopeful expression of someone who had just been dropped into an unfamiliar situation and was trying to identify the least threatening person in the room to talk to.

He brightened when he saw Soren looking back. "Hey there. Good to meet you. My name's Evan. Evan Grant. You can call me Evan, or just Grant, whatever works for you. I'm new here, as you probably gathered. I'd really appreciate any advice you've got."

Soren studied him for a moment. "Zhang," he said. "You're from the mainland?"

"Born and raised." Evan's smile carried a note of self-deprecating humor that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Got recruited with a very convincing pitch about overseas business opportunities. Turns out the opportunity was for someone else's benefit." He glanced toward the door, then back. "You look like you've been here a while. Any chance you could fill me in on how things work around here?"

"You're taking this well," Soren said.

"What's the alternative?" Evan spread his hands. "The men outside have guns. Falling apart doesn't seem productive."

There was more to that answer than the words themselves. Soren noted it and moved on.

"Port Morrow," he said, after a pause. "You know it?"

Evan blinked. "Port Morrow? Sure, it's a place. Coastal town, part of Morrow Province, maybe a day's travel from here depending on the road. Why?"

"You know the route?"

"Not off the top of my head, no." Evan scratched the back of his neck, thinking. "But when they walked me in just now, there was a map on the wall at the end of the corridor. A regional one, looked like it covered most of the Frontier Republic. The route would probably be on it."

He paused, and something shifted in his expression, the easy sociability giving way to something sharper and more alert. He leaned forward slightly and dropped his voice. "Are you planning a way out of here?"

Soren didn't answer. He rose from the floor and moved to the door, positioning himself at the edge of the frame where the angle through the small window gave him the best view of the corridor without exposing his face.

At the far end of the hallway, tacked to the wall beneath a flickering fluorescent light, was a map. Old, the paper gone slightly yellow at the edges, but legible. The coastline of the Frontier Republic was visible even from this distance, and somewhere on that map was the road between here and wherever he needed to be.

He studied it for a long moment without moving.

Behind him, Evan was still waiting for an answer.