High rise low life

  “I got you!” Sulphyr yelled, Gradie watched his iove to Mavericks on the mini-map. The MG went wild, and Gradie suspected that Nova hadn’t blihe gunner as much as he thought. Whatever pity Gradie felt for the tragedy pying out across the hall, it died without even a whimper uhe crushi of his own panicked desire to take as much advantage of the sudden calm in the pool room as he could.

  He pushed on Nuke as she stomped forward.

  “Would you quit shoving me?”

  “We o move! Before the MG—”

  “I am trying! Quasar’s map thing doesn’t show when there’s a fug chair in the way though, so yoing to have to wait for me to clear us a path, unless you want to let go of me and go on your own!” Her pauses were punctuated by grunts as she kicked fold out chairs and boxes of resistance flippers across the tile, loudly.

  So, in an odd moment of calm, not unlike some of the surreally banal pauses between firefights he had experienced in the Hardworlds, they moved in bursts of rushed jogging broken by frustrated kicks across the deck toward the door outlined in glowing e on their HUD, as the MG fired in bursts at something a few walls away.

  As they approached the door, the MG fire got louder.

  “Must be close,” Gradie said, partially as an apology.

  “Brilliant observation! Now tell me how many bullets they have left.”

  “Uh, five.”

  Another burst echoed in the walls.

  “Ok, zero.”

  Nuke snickered in her mask.

  “Ok good. Then you run up ahead and drop a grenade—"

  The far wall of the room they had just entered, which was like a reception area mixed with a lou by a thin portion of two story high window, exploded in a burst of wood paneling and drywall. Nuke squealed and turtled again, and Gradie crouched behind her.

  “Moving!” Maverick yelled, and Gradie watched their three is, one of which was marked with a little red cross symbol, dash across the gym. The MG fire was like a hailstorm, and uhe bursts iatorium, this time the rounds fell freely everywhere, and Gradie couldn’t pinpoint a blind spot.

  “Holy shit,” Luke said suddenly.

  “What?” Gradie said, hoping he had cracked some weakness in the enemy’s position.

  “It really is a big ass tree.”

  “Would you quit staring at it and move?” Robin said.

  “You gotta learn to appreciate nature.”

  Like clockwork, the MG fire got a notch quieter and the rain of future-bullets around Gradie stopped on a dime.

  “Cover!” Maverick shouted, and their is scattered again, this time across a lounge oher side of the big circur tree atrium from where Luke and his team were maneuvering up the staircase.

  “Throw a smoke so we move, please!” Nuke hissed on Gradie’s direct el. He grabbed one off his belt, but stopped and looked at the holes in the wall.

  “Wait, how will that help? We’re sed by the wall anyway.”

  “Oh my god, they’re not watg us from there!”

  “What?”

  Nuke un-turtled one arm and pointed out the wide window.

  “They have a camera out on some tower. That’s why Quasar couldn’t take it out! Now throw a fug smoke!”

  Gradie pulled the pin, but stopped. He had been looking at the ground food pce to toss it when something stuck out. The st five feet of floor in front of the windows were pletely unscathed.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  He tossed the grenade in the far er o the window and waited for the smoke to spread. O did, he spped Nuke hard on the bad pihe untouched scrap of carpet o the window.

  “What?”

  “Blind spot.”

  That was all it took. She de-turtled and dashed over yanking him along.

  “You’d better be right!”

  Gradie switched els.

  “Hey Notbanned, I think these MG’s have locked traversals.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. They got a big blind spot on the west side wall over here. Probably so they won’t shoot out the windows.”

  “Why would they give a fuck about that?” Robin said.

  “Anti-Air empts,” Nova said. “They got the sensors stuck to the side of the building. Armored shell oside, but any round fired from within would have free reign oernals. Good eye Corpse. I’m gonna map the anti-air and overy—”

  The MG got loud again, which Gradie knew by now was a result of it transitioning mouseholes, and the Lobby o them erupted. This time, not a single round hit urtled armor, and after a few bursts she popped out.

  “Ok, I’m gonna bst this wall, then we’re moving in.”

  “Wait,” Maverick said. “Let us move up and we’ll hit it—”

  A distant roar broke out, and Sulphyr’s i went red on the s with a sound like a failed buzzer.

  “Shit! Cover! The !”

  “I thought you said they couldn’t shoot towards that wall!” Mack screamed.

  Gradie looked at the map. The eastern MG was marked as “engaged” and its line of fire was drawn as a dotted line, cuttiward in front of the circur tree atrium, and interseg with the western MG’s line of fire in an ominous X right on Maverick’s position. The dotted lierminated on the western wall Nova had marked the first se of anti-air sensors on.

  “They probably have range limiters,” Nova said. “So the rounds dissipate after a set distance.”

  “So is this a trap?” Nuke said, looking around frantically.

  “No, the west MG probably is probably restricted in that dire because the range limiters won’t work so close. There's a minimum distance—”

  “Nuke! Move on that fug MG now!” Maverick yelled.

  “Quasar,” Luke said in a tone of calm refle. “Could the MG’s fire at each other safely with the limiters?”

  “Uh, I’d have to pare the distaween them against known limiter models, but they might not want to take the ce. Personnel on this kind of defense is way more valuable than even anti-air, so—”

  “ you guys fuck off to your own el!” Nuke yelled.

  “I moved them,” Nova said. “Mad Mav are pinned down. We’re moving to them right now, but I don’t know how long—”

  “Don’t worry I’m not waiting!”

  Nuke walked up to the yellow HUD outline of the north wall and spped a charge on it. She backed up so fast that Gradie almost fell etting out of her way, and when he ressed between her and the south wall, she turtled.

  “Charge out!”

  He got down just in time, now vinced she had fotten he existed. The bst ripped the room apart. Almost immediately, the soft glow of the te twilight sky broke into the interior. The bst had blown out the floor-to-ceiling windows and most of the smoke was gone in a rush of wind almost instantly.

  “Moving!” she yelled, before the bst had finished eg out in the night air, and sprinted fradie scrambled after her and a drone whizzed by overhead.

  “Wait, wait!” Nova said. “Let me—”

  omped over the smoking ruins of the wall and immediately fired her grenade uncher across the room. Unfortunately fradie, the room was less than ten yards across. Large for a bedroom, but still paough to fuhe shockwave back at him with painful effect. His boill shaking from the breag charge, he tried to believe it was all just make-believe, but in the back of his mind, the burning feeling of the round ripping through his calf reflected his words like armor.

  “Nuke! Let me check—”

  Anre ova off. This time the entire bedroom wall bleart and revealed a two-store open space, an artsy lounge and living area cut from some high end New York high rise. Strange hanging sculptures swung i, mirrors and framed art reflected subtle evening light filtered in through angled skylights, but after a moment, the penthouse-ness faded, aiced qualities that stood out of pce; lights and sers flickered in all spectrums in his goggles. Entire masses of floor and wall had been cut out, while other portions had been formed by the same molded material he had seen in the kill-hall, and dark holes and slits, imperable even to his enhanced infrared light, watched him from everywhere.

  Nuke had takeep into this space, and must have realized what just befradie, because by the time the MG erupted from a dark hole in the far wall, she was already turtled.

  “Shit!” Gradie dove behind her as the rounds ripped the tile floor to pieces and cracked behind him into the bedroom.

  “My gun!” Nuke yelled.

  Gradie saw a k of what used to be her grenade uncher drop to her feet, along with a broken tube of grenades which he hoped the MG fire didn’t set off, just before he rolled his st smoke greween Nuke’s legs. It bounced across the floor towards the hole in the wall spitting fire and broke open with a cough.

  “Damn girl, guess you’ll be throwing them,” Mack said.

  “Moving!” Nuke said as the smoke spread, and Gradie grabbed onto her handle for dear life as they sprinted into a darkened kit to the left and bato what was hopefully still the MG’s blind spot. The MG fire, which had been a single focused stream on orso, now fanned out and raked the living room behind them as omped across the kit tile towards the long dining area waiting sleepily under more two-story windows.

  Then, suddenly, the MG went silent, Nukes loud stomps echoed in the dead still apartment, and Gradie khey had fucked up.

  “Shit, the windows,” was all he got out before a new, more focused stream of MG fire erupted from some other mousehole, and sprayed right into Nuke.

  “Ahhh!” she screamed and turtled, and Gradie, who had been sprinting after her, ran smato her now support-pilr-solid bad crumpled backwards onto the floor, which was a bit of luck sihe stream of lethal rounds danced where he would have been standing and sparked off Nuke.

  “Do something!” She yelled, and something in her squeal sparked an epiphany.

  For the st twenty minutes, he had been hiding like a bitch every time the MG so the point that he had fotten he was even armed.

  He activated his jump suit and unched himself up off the ground in a twist and snatched a grenade off his belt. As he e away from Nuke, on top of the kits stone ter, he threw the gre the fire spitting mousehole, then stood there looking at it.

  “Get down you moron!” Nuke yelled, but it was too te. Gradie, somehow, had unlearned every grenade lesson Philip had ever given him, and watched as the bst threw hot shrapnel all over him.

  “Fuck!”

  He back flipped off the ter and crashed into a kit rack.

  “Frag out!” Nuke yelled, and for a moment Gradie thought she was talking about the one he had just eaten, until another bst rocked the kit.

  “Frag out! Frag out” Fuck you!” She screamed. Gradie rolled into a croud saw over the top of the kit ter that while her head was still turtled and immobile, her right arm liable and spinning like a windmill, tossing what he guessed were the spare grenades from her uncher.

  The MG fire died again. Nuke gave it two seds before she de-turtled and bolted to the window.

  The MG started again, this time distant and muffled.

  “God damn how many holes this mother fucker got?” Mack said. “Quasar, you ’t fly a bomb drohrough not one of these fug things?”

  “They block them up and pump EMP through when they fire,” Nova said sadly.

  “I’m hit!” Maverick yelled, before the el went quiet. Nuke had apparently moved her and Gradie to their own line, as he saw the rest of the teams is light up but didn’t hear them.

  “I am no longer having fun,” she said ftly. “I hate this god damned call of duty shit.”

  Gradie crept over to her while keeping one eye on the now widened hole in the far wall. She was sitting down with her back to the window like a boxer after a fight, very clearly bored. In the near dead twilight amplified by his goggles, he couldn’t see a scrat her armor.

  “So how much damage your suit take?”

  “What? Oh, it’s immuo projectiles and any bst up to a tactiuke. At least the ptes are. e years of saving up and holy I’m not sure it’s worth it. I’d rather have more mobility. Just staying alive isn’t as fun as you might think.”

  The words “any bst” had cooked off something in his head, and he was already sing the mini map, nolified by Novas test tonal ss, as a pn grew in his mind.

  “This is going to sound like a stupid idea,”

  “Stupid might be fun,” Nuke said, sitting up.

  “The MG is in that back bedroom. Looks like the walls are pretty thick, but the space is small. What if you took all of your charges, stuck them to the front of your suit, snuck up to that wall, then turtled and—”

  The MG cracked open the air around them and turhe tranquil windoatio into a hellscape of falling gss and breaking everything.

  Would you splurge on a turtle suit? ime, a mad dash at some maeguns. episode, Desperation Game.