As if agents get such certainty in real life. Still, that number won’t go down. Maybe they expect the counter to rattle you as it changes.
Time to move.
You dispose of the lavender-orange drink without tasting it—you’re afraid of the scenario authors’ imagination already; what were they thinking?—and make your way toward Medical. It occupies one of the innermost levels. The people you pass talk about everything from debugging ecoscrubbers to failed affairs. There’s a discussion of ways to improve a recipe for honey sesame cookies. The banality of their concerns is almost enough to convince you that they’re real people. You’d even feel bad if you failed to save them.
You’re ambushed by a tall woman and a demure-looking alt in a quiet corridor on the way. Which is alarming, because clearly they knew you were coming. In the scenario’s context that can only be one thing: a warning. It’s impossible not to try to anticipate the scenario author’s intent for clues.
Twist and joint-lock and the quiet-loud crunch of bone. They’re down before you have time to panic over the implications, for which you’re grateful. One of them is still alive, which means that you can—
The alarm goes off. Not a scenario alarm—it’s impossible to graduate Academy without enduring at least one botched scenario—but a priority-one Citadel-wide alert. You only recognize it because of the briefing you received on the way to the Citadel. You assumed it was the standard orientation, although you memorized it as a matter of course, without expecting the information to become relevant during your training.
The inside-out eyeball feeling recurs. The visuals, the sound, everything freezes. Worse is being dumped back into Citadel time without the usual precious moments of adjustment.
A databurst sears through the augment. Most of it’s too high-clearance for you; you’re informed that you’re authorized to know that there is an alert, but that’s all. Honestly, you’re impressed that Shuos bureaucrats have left something out of contingency planning. But sending newly graduated cadets to the Citadel itself for advanced training is a rare occurrence. You almost can’t blame them. Assuming this, too, isn’t a continuation of the scenario. You’re betting that’s what’s going on.
“Listen,” a voice says into your augment. It’s tense and rapid, and—this makes your spine prickle—seems to be coming from outside the simulator. “The experienced infantry are elsewhere, so you’ll have to do. They haven’t cracked this channel yet, they’re focusing on high-priority shit like isolating Mikodez and the senior staff. I’ve updated your map with the current layout and given you the highest clearances I can without triggering the grid’s watchdog sweeps, which I think they’re monitoring. Get to Armory 15-2-5, grab some basic armaments. Link up with—” Static.
‘They’ who? “Requesting update on situation,” you say. For all you know the damn scenario has crashed and the voice belongs to a completely different game. “I’m here for training, I don’t have access, I don’t know the situation.”
More static, swearing. “Look, this isn’t—” You tell yourself the voice’s tremor is a fiction. “Look, I don’t do this real-time shit, I’m in logistical analysis; I study food. You have to get out of there. There are hostile infantry running around and a squad on Level 15 is heading for the spatial stabilizer and I can’t raise local security, they might have been taken out, please—”
The voice drops out, no static this time, nothing. You wait for an interminable minute on the off chance that it will return. No luck.
You’ll play along. You manually kick the scenario, and your nerves flare with phantom pain as the simulator drops the inputs. You extricate yourself from the chamber, dumping all the red weaponry except the (dull) knife, which you could theoretically use to stick someone in the eye. Then you head for the armory by the most direct route, since speed is your ally.
Like most larger stations, the Citadel routinely uses variable layout, which allows spatial elements to be rearranged for more rapid travel between them. You worry that someone will switch variable layout off and leave you spindled between here and nowhere. The technology has an extremely good safety record—if you don’t take hostiles into account.
The Citadel is vast. Even the updated map is obfuscated due to security issues. The artificially induced vertigo, another defensive measure, is maddening. Only the medical countermeasures you brought with you keep you upright. You slam up against the armory without warning. The doors are open and there’s smoke. Nice to know that you didn’t bring a mask for nothing.
The augment won’t tell you whether anything’s in there, since you don’t have even that much clearance. With your luck, you’ll be hit with tranquilizer clouds the moment you go in, and that’s the best-case scenario. But you have to give the game your best shot.
You plunge into the armory, armed with knife and bravado. Even with the augment it’s difficult to see past the smoke.
A subliminal slither-scale noise, then a hiss, catch your attention. You duck low. Someone’s here, an unfriendly someone. The hiss comes again, and with it a knife-line of stinging pain just shy of your left shoulder.
You have no idea what they’ve rigged the security protocols to do if you use even fake guns, so it’ll have to be the dull-edged knife. It won’t do you much good if you can’t close the distance, however.
You hear the unmistakable click of a splinter grenade’s pin being removed and sprint for cover. You glimpse the grenade as it thunks solidly against a wall of boxes labeled HANDLE WITH CAUTION—SUSCEPTIBLE TO FIRE, CONCUSSION, AND STUPIDITY. (The only surprise is that STUPIDITY isn’t listed first.)
The grenade goes off and you’re deafened. It’s a fucking grenade and are you ever grateful for the instinct that yanked you to the safest place in the geometry of the fucking armory, sheltered partly by the edge of a locker, partly by a bin that someone didn’t put back properly. Even then you take splinters through your side and right arm, but you still have your left, and the medical foam is bubbling up from your jacket’s circulatory systems to seal the wounds even if it’s not doing anything for the agony.
Your brain catches up to that glimpse: the grenade wasn’t red.
It wasn’t red. They just tried to kill you with the genuine article.
This isn’t a training game anymore.
Despite the pain, you locate an intact weapons bank and scrabble to open it. The credentials the unknown voice provided you are genuine. You snatch up a scorch pistol.
You whip out of the armory and around the corner firing. The hostile, wearing a foreign-looking articulated suit, attempts to retaliate with the pain-scourge of whatever-it-is. Your aim is true, your reflexes better; the scorch hits her full-on. She screams.
You’re far enough back that the grenade at her belt shattering into a thousand thousand pieces doesn’t do more than sting. The damage is probably worse than it feels. You can assess that later.
There’s not much left of a body to inspect. It’s not the only one, either. The blast caught some others. The smell, charred metal and meat and shit, makes your gorge rise. You force yourself to look at the red smears on the floor, the walls. The worst part is a chunk of face with a full eye almost intact, staring lopsidedly at a shredded piece of lung.
No. That’s not the worst part. You wonder that you almost missed it, but you’re not thinking very clearly right now. A shiver of revulsion passes through you. The eye’s iris is vivid violet.