Chương 9: Arc 0 - Chapter 9 - Survival I

Back at her foxhole, Thea took a few minutes to get her thoughts in order. Too much had happened in the last hour. Too much information at once, too many questions that had come up—some answered; others still open, some of which likely for a long time. She couldn't just push on without taking a moment to center herself. She slowed her breathing and slipped into a light, meditative state, letting her tired mind relax, even if only briefly.

Being thrown straight from her cosy undercity home into a high-tension warzone had been far more draining than she'd expected, which sounded far more obvious in hindsight than it had really any right to. The Deep-Dive Simulation didn't help with that either—it felt too real.

'Games aren't supposed to completely wear you out like this,' she thought grimly. After about five minutes, she felt steady again and brought her focus back to the mission. Her primary objective timer showed another eight and a half hours remaining.

'Plenty of time to rack up points,' she decided. With her energy renewed, she set her DMR back up and scanned the horizon. The cease-fire was over now that countermeasures were in place, and she was pre-approved to take any shots she deemed viable.

'Not letting anyone steal my kills this time…!' Only a few minutes later, she spotted another scout moving along the enemy hilltops. She estimated the distance at roughly one-point-six klicks, confirming it with the built-in rangefinder on her visor. For the third time that day, she lined up her sights on the upper jaw, narrowed her focus to herself, the rifle, and the target, and shut everything else out. She slowed her breathing, recalling the Old Man's drills.

Between two heartbeats, halfway through an exhale, she squeezed the trigger. The laser punched clean through the scout's jaw, vaporising the brainstem and part of the spine in an instant. Through the scope, she watched the body crumple like a puppet with its strings cut. He was dead before his mind could even register the hit. Relief and exhilaration surged through her.

'Yes…! I can pull the trigger.' She immediately jumped out of her foxhole and sprinted toward the nearest trenchline, rifle in hand. Even with countermeasures active, she wasn't about to stand around and risk getting vaporised for no reason. Seconds later, a massive explosion bloomed hundreds of metres above her foxhole as the GOG shell was intercepted mid-air. Seeing it work cleanly for the second time, her trust in the system finally settled in.

'Not a fluke, then. Good stuff.' She returned to her position with renewed confidence and got back to work, eagerly clearing out every scout she could find… Half an hour later, she had taken down another four scouts, bringing her total to five. Every shot had landed exactly where she wanted it to, which left her quietly satisfied. She also noticed that no new scouts had shown up in the last ten minutes or so.

'Guess they finally got the message,' she thought. Losing scout after scout with nothing to show for it—especially with every GOG shell getting intercepted time and again—had probably forced them to finally rethink their approach. For the first two kills, she had still sprinted for the nearest trenches right after firing, not fully trusting the countermeasures yet. For the last three, she had stayed put in her foxhole, letting the now clearly reliable defences handle the Stellar Republic's retaliation.

With the panic gone and no need to run for her life anymore, she finally had time to really observe her surroundings. One thing she noticed were the shockwaves that followed each intercepted GOG shell high above the UHF lines.' Those have to be sonic booms, right?' She thought.' From the shells coming down from basically space… That would make sense.' Earlier, she hadn't noticed them at all, drowned out by the explosions themselves or her desperate sprint for cover. Bit by bit, her confidence came back.

The earlier fumbling, the emotional whiplash, the flood of new information, and her initial failure to pull the trigger no longer weighed on her as heavily. Satisfied with her work for now and with a distinct lack of Stellar Republic movement, she allowed herself to relax a little.

She pulled a nutrient pack and a water ration from her backpack and made herself more comfortable in the foxhole, stacking a few leftover synth-fabric bags as makeshift pillows. As she ate her simple meal, she went over everything that had happened in the past couple of hours. It felt like a lifetime ago that she'd been standing in the arcade, even though only two or three hours had passed since she'd entered the crystal cylinder. And yet… she didn't hate this.

If anything, she felt more exhilarated than she ever had before. Still, beneath the thrill, something about it all felt deeply unsettling—something that wouldn't quite let her relax.' The Deep-Dive Simulation feels way too damn real…' Nothing felt off. And that was the problem, really: No matter how hard she looked, she couldn't find any cracks. Everything felt distinctly alive, like a real, breathing world.

'Like I'm not playing a game at all,' she thought.' Like I was dropped into another version of myself, millions of light years away, somehow living through this exact moment.' A slow sense of existential dread crept in as she failed, again and again, to find anything that felt truly "game-like." The only proof that this wasn't her real life was the small primary mission timer in the top-right corner of her vision, steadily ticking its way toward zero.

Just as Thea was finishing her rough lunch a few minutes later, her comms crackled to life, Kellerman's voice coming through with a tense edge to it.

"Private, you seeing anything out there? It's been too void-damned quiet ever since they stopped sending scouts. Please tell me you've got something." She snapped back to her feet, sealed her helmet, and swept the horizon with her scope. After a second, slower pass to be sure, she answered.

"Negative, SL. Nothing moving. Maybe they finally gave up?"

"Ha, as if," Kellerman shot back.

"That's why the UHF hates fighting these freaks. They're masters of attrition. We used to dominate that kind of war, but the Stellar Republic made it their life's mission to be a pain in everyone's ass for all eternity." He let out a heavy sigh.

"Set yourself up for a long fight. I've got a bad feeling they're cooking something up. If the last engagements are anything to go by, a big push is coming." She pinged her comms once in acknowledgement and got to work. First, she pulled out several capacitor mags for her laser rifle and placed them within easy reach around the foxhole, so she wouldn't have to dig through her pack during a reload.

Next, she carved out three small recesses at chest height in the dirt wall ahead of her and slid two grenades into each. Keeping them tucked away felt safer than leaving them exposed—no need to risk a stray fragment setting one off, even if that should theoretically be impossible, given their construction.' But better safe than sorry…' Once everything was in place, she settled back into overwatch. A slow, uneasy tension crept into her chest as Kellerman's warning echoed in her head.

Another fifteen minutes crawled by with Thea staring at the hillside, nothing of note happening. She hadn't expected war to be so… quiet.' And fucking boring…' In every game she'd played, something was always happening. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. The dull parts were completely skipped over, trimmed away in favour of constant action.

Only now—actually living through a slice of it—did she realise how much work those skips had been doing in keeping the experience an engaging one.' Nobody in their right mind would want to play a game that was mostly just waiting like this...' Before the train of thought could go any further however, everything happened all at once. Over the Stellar Republic's hilltop came hundreds—no, thousands —of black, cylindrical objects streaking through the air at terrifying speed.

Before Thea could even fully react, they slammed into the ground roughly two hundred metres in front of the UHF's first trench line. She snapped her zoom in and studied them. The objects stopped drilling once they'd anchored themselves about ten centimetres into the dirt. Matte black. Roughly thirty centimetres long. About fifteen centimetres thick. She couldn't make out much else.' What the fuck are those things…? I should call this in and—' She didn't get the chance.

The backs of the cylinders detonated all at once, venting thick, black-purple smoke in violent bursts. The cloud spread fast, billowing upward and outward, completely swallowing the hillside beyond. Her view of the enemy's hillside vanished in a matter of seconds. Her comms crackled to life at the same time; the command channel.

"This is western command," Captain Greysmith's steady voice rang out.

"The Stellar Republic is initiating a major push on our front. Do not let them gain ground. This won't be their first push, and it won't be their last—so don't let it be ours. Wait for the smoke to clear, then blast them back to the void. Good hunting, Marines." The words cut clean through the haze in her head. Focus snapped back into place. From her elevated position, Thea watched as the entire UHF side of the hill moved as one, snapping into action.

Ammunition boxes were cracked open, heavy machine guns uncovered, emplacements readied, weapons double-checked and safeties disengaged everywhere she looked. What struck her most was that none of the marines seemed flustered. They moved fast, but none of them hurried. Like a well-oiled machine, the entire UHF hillside prepared for the coming clash. That professionalism eased some of the tension in Thea's chest.

Seeing how controlled everyone was made the situation feel more manageable, even with the scale of what was about to happen. She tightened her grip on the Mjollnir and waited, eyes fixed on the smoke still pouring from the cylinders roughly nine hundred metres down the hill. And just like that, less than a minute after the command channel had last sparked to life in everyone's ears, preparations were done. Now everyone simply went back to the same thing as before: Waiting.

An eerie silence settled over the fortifications. To Thea, the moment stretched on endlessly. She wanted to do something— anything —but being ready was all she could offer. Then, finally, the first enemy broke through the smoke. The hillside erupted into a deafening cacophony. Gunfire thundered across the UHF lines, so loud and unified it made her flinch. The projectile-based heavy machine guns were the worst of it, hammering the air as they spat dozens of rounds a second into the smoke.

Each hit came with a dull pop as oversized explosive rounds simply erased targets on contact. Kellerman's squad, closest to her position, was already firing at full force as well. She caught glimpses of their two heavy-armour troopers snapping massive grenade launchers toward the smoke, blanketing whole sections in violent explosions that left nothing behind but fire and ripped apart, broken remains. Realising she'd spent the opening seconds just watching, Thea snapped back into focus.

She dropped her eye to the scope and went to work. Just like with the scouts, she aimed for the upper jaw of any soldier she could line up and pulled the trigger. Again. And again. Every shot was a kill. But there was no rush of triumph this time. There were simply too many enemies for that. No matter where she looked, hundreds—no, thousands—of Stellar Republic soldiers kept charging uphill toward the first UHF trench line, pushing forward despite the insane amount of firepower tearing into and through them.

By the time she dropped her twenty-second enemy of the day—including the five scouts from earlier—she swapped out the first energy cell on her rifle.' There's got to be a way to thin them out faster…!' she thought mid-reload. The enemy was getting closer to their first trench line, metre by metre. She had no idea how many enemies the UHF had killed since the fighting began, but it had to be in the thousands by now. Just the stretch she could see from her foxhole was piled with bodies.

There were so many that the dead had formed a crude trench of their own, giving the next wave cover as they relentlessly advanced. UHF grenade launchers hammered those dense clusters again and again, trying to blast the makeshift cover apart, but there were simply too many bodies for it to make any real difference in the long run. Thea quickly realized, ' Killing one enemy at a time just isn't going to cut it here…!'

She started scanning for high-value targets—officers, squad leaders, anything that might slow the push—but despite her best efforts, she didn't manage to spot a single one. That's when it hit her.

'These are just grunts,' she realised, eyes widening in abject horror.' Just meat to throw at us…' There were no leaders needed when the only order was " run." With that horrifying realization in mind, she switched her laser rifle to overcharge. It would burn through capacitor mags faster, but each shot would punch through multiple targets. The trade-off made perfect sense here.' Thank you Captain Sable, for telling me to load up on ammo… I really will need it.' Once she resumed firing, the results were immediate.

Each overcharged shot dropped three, four—sometimes even five enemies at once. With only a few viable paths up the hill—choked by UHF fortifications, craters, and the sheer number of dead—the attackers bunched together, turning her penetrating shots into brutal lines of death. After a short while, she lost track of her kill count altogether. There were just too many bodies dropping to be sure anymore.

It took her a good moment to break the habit of counting—something she'd done since her earliest days of gaming—but with no other choice, she let it go and focused on the only thing that now mattered instead: Firing faster… By the time her fifth energy cell ran dry, the battle hit its first grim milestone. Despite every effort to hold the line and thin the enemy ranks, there were simply too many of them. Thea watched on in muted horror as hundreds of Stellar Republic fighters poured into the first UHF trench line.

Most of the Marines stationed there had pulled back a few minutes earlier, but a handful had heroically stayed behind to cover their comrades' retreat. Those few were torn apart almost instantly, caught in a deadly crossfire and hammered by dozens upon dozens of rounds and laser shots at once. The Stellar Republic's weapons were clearly inferior at range, but at point-blank distance, that disadvantage meant nothing. In mere moments, the first trench line collapsed completely and fell to the enemy.

A massive, earth-shaking cheer rolled across the hillside as thousands of Stellar Republic soldiers celebrated their first hard-won gain of the battle. Shortly after that setback, which seemed to only reinvigorate the enemy's push, Thea started to notice something strange. With her scope always set to a level that made precise shots easy, she had a clear view of the Stellar Republic soldiers' faces, their rough ages, even some minor details like scars.

At first, she hadn't paid any attention to it all, but after hundreds upon hundreds of shots, her mind had started latching onto details just to break the monotony. That was when it finally clicked: Some of them looked the same. No— not just similar.' They are fucking identical…!' Startled by the realization, she paused her rapid firing and instead carefully tracked faces across her field of view. Many soldiers were clearly different, but there was no denying it anymore—some were exact copies of one another.

She counted at least four of the same man clustered together, all scrambling out of the first trench line toward the second. Same face. Same build. Same filthy rags. Same weapons. Perfect matches, down to the smallest detail. Unsure what to make of it, she opened her comms and pinged Kellerman.

"SL, I'm not sure what to make of this, but some of the Stellar Republic fighters are… identical. Like, same face, same gear, same everything. Any idea what that's about?" After a short delay—during which she dropped another dozen fighters—Kellerman replied.

"Private, first time fighting the freaks, huh? Should've been in your mission primer, but I guess that's on the brass. It's one of the reasons we call 'em that; ' Freaks' that is. The Stellar Republic's got an ability that lets their soldiers duplicate themselves, up to a point. Don't misunderstand though—those copies are fully real. Not illusions. They can and will kill you if you let them.

"They're bad at independent thinking, though. Usually need to be 'ordered' by the original body. Problem is, the originals are mixed right into the fight, so picking them out is damn near impossible. On the bright side though, when we do kill one of the originals, all their duplicates drop dead on the spot.

"That's why our heavies love their grenade launchers. Makes it real easy to accidentally take out an original and wipe the whole bunch in one go." The explanation had been far more detailed than she'd expected in the middle of a battle, and it immediately set her thoughts racing.

'How do they even have perfect duplication tech when they're supposedly so far behind the UHF's tech that we can instantly block the GOG-launchers once we know they have them? And there has to be a limit to it… right? Otherwise they could just keep replacing fallen copies forever while the originals sit safe somewhere…

'And how the fuck have I never heard of something this insane before?! Perfect duplication of people, weapons, armour—everything?! If it's this easy and they're using it this much in war, why isn't it everywhere?!' And most of fucking all—why are the UHF marines so damn calm about it all…?!' An enemy that could duplicate its soldiers at will felt like a seriously massive problem to her. Yet Kellerman had explained it like it was just another minor annoyance on the battlefield.

That disconnect sat wrong with her, and she couldn't shake it. Unfortunately, she didn't have the time to dig into any of those questions right now. With the intel relayed and something new to work with, she slid another capacitor mag into her rifle and started forming a new plan. If she could figure out how to tell the originals apart from the duplicates, she could supposedly wipe out entire enemy squads in one singular shot…