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Chapter 16


Alpha Bosses, as it turned out, were worth an insane amount of experience.

That was fortunate because the total experience needed to achieve each level increased exponentially. Together with the group and achievement bonuses, Operation Boss Bash collectively bumped Lynn and her team up an entire level, from 37 to 38. That benefit alone lowered Lynn’s stress level considerably, though with barely three months left until the June fifteenth championship—and school finals coming up to boot—she knew they would be hard-pressed to achieve Level 40 in time.

The op’s rewards went beyond experience, though. Everyone who participated got a random rare augment on top of a choice between five unique weapons with significantly better stats than the standard. None of them were as good as Wrath or Abomination, since those items leveled with her and benefited from the Skadi’s set bonus. But Lynn picked what she thought was the most competitive weapon anyway to sell at auction later.

For the rest of her team, it was like Christmas come early. Edgar picked up Snazzgun of Da Boyz, a two-handed monstrosity that looked as if someone had bolted together a grenade launcher, a flamethrower, and a cannon all in one. From the way Edgar giggled in glee at reading the stats, Lynn assumed there would be many spectacular explosions in their future. Dan went all starry-eyed over the Ambanese Sniper Rifle outfitted with a Splinter Blade bayonet—“I can shoot and stab at the same time!”—while Mack hooted at a pair of deceptively plain-looking pistols called the Croft Desert Eagles. Their high-damage, low-energy ammunition would make Mack a terror on the battlefield.

Ronnie’s new sword was probably the most impressive, though its name made him grumble. Lynn thought he should have been grateful for the jaw-dropping stats and left it at that. Instead, he argued with Mack about whether “Zelda’s Sword of Mastery” was a terrible insult to a historic game or a hilarious inside joke.

An even greater reward than the experience and items, though, were the friendships that were forged.

After the battle, most of Skadi’s Horde descended on the nearest Happy Joe’s pizza and emptied their entire kitchen of food. DeathShot—or Derek as Lynn found out once they got around to real introductions—and his team joined Skadi’s Wolves and several other teams for taco pizza. There was great celebration and many exaggerated retellings of their most impressive kills before players finally started trickling away. Many of them had airbuses to catch and long flights before they reached home. Lynn wished them safe travels and tried not to worry. During lunch she’d gotten a brief message from the captain of one of the two teams who hadn’t shown up, letting her know their airbus had malfunctioned on the way to Cedar Rapids and had been forced to make an emergency landing. The message stirred up paranoid thoughts and conspiracy theories that she tried to ignore. Thoughts like why airbuses seemed so unreliable recently, and what Connor’s next backstabbing attempt at sabotage was going to be. He and CRC had been suspiciously quiet the past month and Lynn had no illusions that it was because they’d decided to play fair and leave Skadi’s Wolves alone.

But Lynn had a victory to celebrate and deserved a break from her overactive brain, so she did her best to focus on her teammates and friends.

Focus was especially necessary to play it cool and not give herself away to Derek. She avoided the topic of WarMonger entirely. But there were still a few times when Derek’s knowing look made her wonder. If he suspected anything, though, he didn’t mention it—for which she was desperately grateful. Ronnie would murder her if he ever found out about Larry Coughlin, and she shuddered at the thought of the story getting out on the streams.

Speaking of streams, in the immediate aftermath of the battle, their team channel’s viewing numbers jumped by thirty percent and their subscriptions passed one hundred million. Kayla pinged her while they were at Happy Joe’s and full-on flipped out over text. Lynn mentally resigned herself to listening to endless new vid ideas from her friend come Monday.

“You too are mortal,” Lynn muttered to herself as she eyed the last slice of taco pizza on the table. Just as she was going to grab it, Dan leaned toward it, still chatting with Sonia about his favorite sniper-rifle settings. Lynn made a split-second decision and dove across the table, scooping up the pizza right out from under Dan’s fingers.

“Hey!”

“I’m the team captain! It’s my right!”

“But I’m hungrier than you.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a guy, guys are always hungrier.”

“Says you. Have you seen how many ounces of steak I can eat in one sitting?”

Dan tried to argue further, but Lynn was already stuffing the pizza into her mouth while their teammates laughed and Sonia gave Dan a sympathetic slap on the back.

“Better luck next time, eh?”

Later, when people were trickling away and the food was all gone, Lynn was absently scanning some of the more esoteric numbers from their battle, things like time spent in combat mode, distance traveled, and monsters killed by class and type.

“Hugo, can you run some numbers for me?”

“Certainly, Miss Lynn.”

“Don’t tell me now, just put them together so I can think about them later. If you have access to the data, I want to know the Hunter-to-TDM ratio of that boss battle.”

“What are my criteria? Only monsters engaged with and destroyed by Skadi’s Horde?”

“No, count all the monsters we engaged plus all others within, say, three hundred yards of Gyges.”

“Very good.”

“Oh, also, I can’t see the more detailed data of the fight from each of the individual Hunters, just the total ranked scores in the main categories like Kill-to-Damage Ratio, Kill Count, stuff like that. I don’t suppose there’s any way you could, um, poke around and get that individual data for me? I’ve got this idea and, well, I’m looking for patterns and it would be really useful . . . ”

“While that is a nonstandard request, since you were the group leader for Skadi’s Horde, I could see what data may be acquired.”

“Thanks, Hugo.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“Don’t even start. I ask you to do things all the time that you won’t do.”

“Such as, Miss Lynn?”

“Like that time I wanted you to prank Ronnie and make him think he’d accidentally gone into combat mode in the bathroom.”

“I beg your pardon, but that was not a legitimate command.”

“It would have been hilarious, though, you gotta admit.”

“That is beside the point . . . 

* * *

Mr. Krator’s private conference room was a sweet deal. Not only were all the chairs a top-of-the-line body-mold brand, but there was one of those new SNAC machines—Simple Nutrition Automative Construct. It was straight out of science fiction, and would “build” whatever snack you wanted using basic food molecules. Or something. Steve didn’t need to know how it worked to enjoy its “snacs.”

He was munching on a double-fried, bacon-wrapped corn dog when the conference room door beeped and admitted a familiar face.

Steve rose.

“Derek! Long time no see, brother. How you Canucks doing these days?”

“Better than you cowboys down here, but only because we have less infrastructure to go haywire.”

The two men clasped forearms. Though Derek was smaller than Steve in stature, there was no less power or confidence in his grip. Steve got his friend settled—Derek opted for an entirely healthy and boring peanut-butter-covered banana bar—and they chatted while they waited for the rest of the meeting’s attendees to arrive.

“So . . . that boss battle,” Steve said.

Derek shook his head.

“I can’t believe she actually did it. I have to admit I was skeptical at first.”

“Nah, I knew she would pull it off.”

“I can hardly believe it and I was there.”

“At least this time she didn’t try any suicidal stunts,” Steve growled.

“It was a close thing, my friend. Did you see what she did with the Jotnar? I didn’t even know that was possible. Who thinks of crazy things like that?”

“Gamer teens, man, I’m telling you. They’re cheeky as hell and think they’re immortal.”

“I’ve been gaming my whole life, Steve, and I didn’t even consider it.”

Steve leaned forward, propping his elbows on the conference table.

“Yeah, but you and I grew up when things were first starting to take off. They didn’t even have legit VR back then. The first VR headset I got as a kid was complete crap compared to what we have now. Lynn though? She’s been steeped in this tech since she could walk.”

Derek made a “hmm” noise, his expression contemplative.

“Besides, we’ve spent our entire adult lives training to follow the rules. I mean, there’s a ton of enthusiastic gamers in the military, but as a type, we aren’t the most ‘think-outside-the-box’ bunch when it comes to gaming.”

Derek tilted his head.

“I would disagree with you there, but our ‘think-outside-the-box’ skills are entirely focused on human-oriented situations. Not gaming and technology.”

Steve waved a hand and was about to continue when the door beeped again, and Mr. Krator himself strode in.

“Hello, Derek. Thanks for coming all the way out to my humble headquarters for this debrief. You could have remoted in, you know.”

“I prefer to keep things old school when I can, sir,” Derek said as he shook Mr. Krator’s hand.

“Well, thank you. Now please, let’s all sit and get things started. The others should be arriving soon.”

Mr. Krator fiddled with the control panel at the head of the table and the lights of the room dimmed. Steve’s LINC synced automatically with the Tsunami display system, since he was an employee, and he assumed Mr. Krator had already sent an invite to Derek’s LINC. The shared display appeared on all their various AR mediums. Steve wasn’t surprised to see Mr. Krator using stylish AR glasses rather than implants as most would expect of the most high-profile game designer in the world. As a rule, those deep in the tech industry trusted their own tech much less than the end user did.

Before long, two holograms joined them at the table: Colonel Bryce, head of Force Training for Taskforce Sanctus, the US branch of CIDER’s unified mobile units; and General Kozelek, who had the unenviable task of herding the mob of cats that was CIDER’s unified military command. This debriefing was, honestly, not something the general needed to attend. But Steve wasn’t surprised the man wanted to hear an update straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

“I want good news, Mr. Krator,” the general began without preamble. “I’ve just come from a meeting with the Joint Foreign Secretaries of CIDER and the only news I have patience left for is good news.”

Mr. Krator shrugged.

“It’s a mixed bag, I’ll admit, General. But I’ll start with the good news: a group of gamers successfully—and without injury, I might add—attacked and destroyed a major nodality that was causing problems in the electrical grid of northeast Cedar Rapids.”

“That was Lynn Raven’s operation, correct?”

“Yes, sir. We had one of our Alpha Tester teams join for observation and intervention—if needed. It was led by Mr. Peterson, here, and he’ll be giving us a full rundown of the details.”

“That’s definitely good news, but if you would, remind me of the significance?” General Kozelek said.

“Well, one of the biggest limiting factors we face in this war is the need for secrecy. While we can field some undercover rapid-response teams to deal with immediate infrastructure threats, and of course we have our research and development teams testing weapons and searching for the incursion point, we are extremely limited in how else we can physically respond to these entities. Drones help, but again, too much sustained and regular activity will be noticed. It’s why we can’t just mobilize thousands of military teams worldwide for a mass extermination push. If we failed to eliminate enough of the nodalities—or they kept multiplying anyway, which seems probable until we can pinpoint the source of the incursion—we would then face global societal upheaval. That would likely cause far more damage than the entities are capable of themselves—at least at this stage of their evolution.

“Our solution of mass extermination under the guise of something else—a game—buys us time to develop our disruptor technology, and is relatively risk-free. The exception, of course, is the physical danger posed by direct contact with the major nodalities. Some of them are more mobile than others, and we’ve seen an extremely aggressive defensive response whenever we’ve attacked one. In the early days, before we truly understood what was going on, we had widespread neurological injury and even death from the varied and unpredictable way the nodalities responded. It’s one reason the TD Hunter interface is so important. We designed the algorithm specifically to analyze and assign a predictive form and behavior pattern to the entities so that our poor human brains can comprehend them enough to destroy them. TD Hunter isn’t just a game, it’s the actual technology by which we track, analyze, and disrupt this alien invasion.

“All that to say, sir, because we have a decentralized system of recruitment and training through the TD Hunter app, there’s only so much we can do to progress the ‘Hunters’ toward our ultimate goal without blowing our cover. We can equip and prepare them as best we can through the tactical forums, but it’s up to them to take the initiative. And, up to this point, none have had all the factors of initiative, sheer skill, and social clout, to take out a major nodality in a way that is survivable and replicable for other Hunters. Lynn Raven is the first.”

General Kozelek looked thoughtful.

“You mention social clout. What does that have to do with a global battle against aliens?”

“A global battle against aliens in the form of a popular game. That’s the key, sir. CIDER’s scientists still haven’t managed to create any disruptor bigger than the equivalent of a hand grenade. The military’s usual advantage in war—big guns—is moot here. Therefore, the only way to eliminate them at this point is sheer numbers.”

“The military has numbers, Mr. Krator. So why is Lynn Raven’s successful operation so significant?”

“Secrecy, remember, sir? We have to balance maintaining the cover of TD Hunter with the rate of the entity incursion. If we move too aggressively, too soon, our cover will be blown and we’ll have that whole global-panic problem to deal with. If we move too slowly, we’ll be overrun before we can find the incursion point. It’s a terrible, terrible balance, and for all we know, we’re already doomed and we just haven’t realized it yet.”

General Kozelek sighed.

“I said good news, Mr. Krator. Good news.”

The CEO chuckled and spread his hands.

“Lynn Raven is your good news, sir. She has the popularity to recruit all the manpower she needs to take on these nodalities while perfectly maintaining TD Hunter’s cover. Early on, there were hundreds of promising players across the world that might have pulled ahead of the pack to do what Lynn Raven is doing. We even had teams of Alpha Testers competing under cover, like Mr. Peterson here, to be that catalyst if necessary. But so far, Lynn is the one whose unique combination of skill and celebrity status has gotten the job done.

“Obviously, the hope is that we’ll have a weapons-development breakthrough soon, create some disruptor nukes, and be rid of these entities in one fell sweep. But until that happens, Lynn Raven leading by popular example for our ‘attack force’ of millions of gamers worldwide, well . . . she’s our best hope.”

The general shook his head.

“The fate of humanity, resting in the hands of a teenager. Based on the behavior of my own teens, I can’t say I’m thrilled about that.”

“She’s good people, if I may say so, sir,” Steve interjected. “Hardworking, responsible, honorable, and one of the best gamers I’ve ever encountered.”

“She’s a good leader, too, sir,” Derek added. “We could certainly do worse.”

“And she’ll be eighteen soon, if it makes you feel any better,” Mr. Krator said with a shrug.

General Kozelek waved a dismissive hand.

“Putting aside the Lynn Raven fan club, gentlemen, let’s get into the meat of things. I know Colonel Bryce has hundreds of units ready to implement whatever new tactics you come up with, so let’s not waste any more of his time. Mr. Peterson, if you would.”

Derek sat up straighter and fiddled with his LINC, populating their shared display with aerial images of the Boss Bash battlefield and various bits of relevant data.

As the Alpha Tester started summarizing the op, Steve leaned back and took a sip of coffee from his Everheat mug. Since he was a civilian now, he wasn’t privy to the team movements and tactical details of Taskforce Sanctus, nor its sister units in the allied CIDER countries. But being on the leadership team of TD Hunter’s tactical department, he did see the increasing TDM numbers on a daily basis. He wasn’t sure General Kozelek or any of the civilian higher-ups truly appreciated how fast these bastards were multiplying. He understood that Lynn—heck, an entire world of gamers—needed time to learn and adapt. But if CIDER didn’t enact Phase II of their plan soon, it might be too late.

The National Championships couldn’t come soon enough.


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