Chapter 48: Delayed Gratification

The red dot had transformed into a pulsing exclamation mark. Buttstroke pressed his weight into Dozer’s back. Dozer stumbled and flashed him a look, eyes wide and nostrils flared.

He’s in my way. What did the guy expect?

The simulated bot’s footsteps quickened and got louder. Though virtual, it seemed the WarFace reproduced the echoes off the walls. An exclamation mark overhead, its silhouette shifted into a quick jog toward them. They would need more than the cover of the alcove.

“Get behind that door.”

The doorway showed nothing but darkness. The fireteam filed through it without incident this time. Buttstroke raised a fist to pound the door button.

“Wait!” Dozer screamed over the comm and put out his hands, fingers splayed like he wanted to grab Buttstroke’s arm.

Buttstroke hesitated. “What?”

The Pithite had almost made it to the corner.

“The sound. It’ll know where we escaped.”

I should press it just to fuck with him.

Before Buttstroke took that advice from the angel of his darker nature, he checked the motion tracker. They stood deep in the yellow zone. The time to mess with Dozer would come. Not now.

“We’ll go through the rooms.” Buttstroke dropped his hand. “Keep corner discipline.”

They would have to play the odds. No blips in front made for better chances than a wary bot behind. Didn’t mean they wouldn’t run into another enemy, though. A blip wouldn’t show up if the Pithite didn’t move, and all that fog of war might hide a spawn point.

The fireteam made it out of the room before the silhouetted bot poked its head around the doorway. Still, it followed in a slow, careful pursuit. They coasted through darkened room after darkened room, with neither bot nor spawn point to speak of. From what the map said, the door in front of them would open into a hallway.

Model put his ear to the door. “All quiet.”

“Open it.”

The door revealed a hallway with the metal grating all the floors had, the same dull metallic finish on the walls, stained with rust where it met the grating, the same pipes used for who-knows-what that went who-knows-where. Yet, they held a tinge of familiarity. Buttstroke had seen this combination of similitude before, but couldn’t place where or why. He took that ringing bell in his head and shut it away. The job took precedence.

The motion tracker has created a bump in the map where the fireteam had seen the hallway. Model poked his head out and scanned the hallway lengthwise, and the map painted the corresponding passage. A four-cornered intersection formed around the white diamond goal icon to the left.

Model pulled back. “Clear.”

“Move out, I think.” The words blubbered up through the phlegm in Buttstroke’s throat.

This fire team stopped to stare at him. Buttstroke had said the order out loud. An ache seized the muscles around his windpipe. The others could tell something was up, but Buttstroke found himself as much in the dark as they were.

“I said move out.” The order came over the comm with steel authority.

The other three checked each other’s faces and blinked a few times. With a shrug, Model took point.

Buttstroke let the others go first. He stepped through the doorway and the recognition hit him. That ringing bell transformed into a gong. Rust didn’t coat the wall. Blood did. Buttstroke’s blood from when his treacherous teammates shot him. The patch had almost washed away.

His calf itched at first until it erupted in pain as if the nerve endings remembered the destroyed flesh. Buttstroke took another step, stumbled, and almost dropped to his knee.

Errorist squinted over his shoulders at him.

Buttstroke narrowed his eyes. “Just get to the damn goal.”

Errorist raised his eyebrows but broke eye contact to gaze at the floor instead.

Buttstroke shook his leg to dispel the ersatz pain. He brought his attention back to the task at hand and checked out the map. A yellow cloud approached, a red dot in its center. He searched for options and found a doorway.

Fortune favors the bold. Time to be bold.

A chill gripped Buttstroke’s legs. His feet refused to lift off the floor, almost like a frost sealed them there. Moments sped by.

“Get moving to that room up ahead!”

Buttstroke bit the inside of his cheek. As soon as he finished the order, something reached up through his guts and curdled his half-digested breakfast. Even though the others started toward the door, Buttstroke checked the motion tracker again. The yellow zone had already enveloped the doorway.

“No!” Buttstroke scrambled up to Model and caught him by the elbow. “Gotta go back.”

Model pulled himself out of Buttstroke’s grip. “The fuck?”

Dozer muttered something under his breath. Buttstroke didn’t need to hear it to understand. At least it didn’t make the yellow zone expand. The fireteam switched momentum and trotted back to where they came.

They swept into the room before the yellow cloud passed over the doorway and trapped them. The fireteam could move deeper into the rooms, but they would set off its aural trigger, and the blip from the other bot still stalked the rooms in search of the human interlopers. So, they hid, with Buttstroke and Errorist on one side, Model and the asswipe on the other. If the bot just thought to check out the room, Buttstroke would be the only one to fail the exercise. That wouldn’t help his standing with Model one bit.

The cone on the motion tracker swept from side to side, penetrated the room for a moment, and moved on. Buttstroke willed his jaw to unclench. He hadn’t noticed the ache in his molars until it subsided. A lightness appeared in his chest.

“Get a move on.” The lightness had already subsided. They hadn’t made it to the goal yet.

The fire team pushed on and moved with good speed. No dots appeared on the map. All appeared safe.

I bet the game is going to spawn another just to make it exciting.

Sure enough, a blip formed into a red dot on the explored hallway behind them. The cone stayed short, but at this pace, they’d get exposed in the yellow zone.

“Get a move on, quiet as you can.”

They did and kept a few steps ahead of the yellow cloud. The closer they got to the goal, the more Buttstroke quickened his pace until he took the lead. That white icon grew in his bifurcated vision. He reached out his hand into the space where the icon floated. His fingers breached the surface. It dispelled. Buttstroke shifted his gaze over to the mission option of the WarFace. The current showed three out of four. Serotonin danced along his neurons. Buttstroke suppressed a grin.

“It’s yours, Dozer. Not much time.”

The yellow zone still came at them.

“Uh...,” Dozer wasted only a heartbeat before he checked out the WarFace, “this way.”

The rest of the fire team followed Dozer around the corner. Buttstroke peeked at the motion tracker. The goal icon sat at a diagonal angle from them and to the right, deep in a lot of unexplored map. Seemed the asshole made the right decision in his choice of routes. Better to put some cover between them and the bot behind than to continue on in a straight line.

The game threw three lone bots at them in quick succession. Each time, Dozer waited until the last possible second to backtrack as if he had any other option. Model’s jaw seemed to clench tighter with every example of pigheaded stubbornness. That heat of frustration would only need a prod at the right time to boil over.

“Fuck me.” Dozer pursed his lips, forced to retreat for the third time. “Back. Back.”

They hid a room so close to the goal, it must have tantalized Dozer. Their tentative leader stretched out the tension in his upper back with quick snaps of his neck from side to side. A bead of sweat ran along a winding vein in his forehead while they waited for the simulated footsteps to fade.

Dozer kept one eye on the motion tracker. “Clear. Move out.”

Model took point as usual, and the fire team followed suit.

Asswipe’s having a hard time with this. Bet the game will throw a last bot at us. If I could pull his attention away from the tracker, I could fuck him up but good.

Buttstroke relaxed his shoulders and let his arms swing by his side. “You limp dicks think you could handle the control unit’s escort by yourselves?”

Model kept his eyes forward. “Don’t see why not.”

Buttstroke kept up the hurried pace but kept his gait relaxed. “I haven’t chosen my Level 2 ability yet.”

“What?” Dozer’s voice came over the comm. “It’s been, what… two weeks since you leveled up. And you still haven’t picked your ability?”

That got him.

Buttstroke didn’t bother looking over his shoulder. Instead, he closed one eye and checked out the motion tracker. A red dot and its yellow zone approach them from the front.

So predictable.

“I’ve got a choice between abilities that up my armor or reduces any target’s level by one. I figure you morons take out the escort, I’ll take the control unit’s level down, kill it, and scoop up all that sweet, sweet XP.”

“You doing all right up there?” Model tapped his temple. “Having some mental problems?”

“The more I think about it,” Buttstroke smirked, “the more I want to take down that control unit.”

Everest peered over his shoulder at Buttstroke. The whites of his eyes glistened. He had the look of a puppy that just got kicked.

I’ll let him in on the con later. They need to bite down on the hook first.

“And what if we fail? We,” Dozer’s voice sputtered, “we need to pass the next exercise or we’re going to get recycled.”

Buttstroke shrugged. “I guess I’d have to find a better fireteam.”

Dozer stopped dead in his tracks. “You fucking—” he said out loud.

Buttstroke and the rest of the fireteam turned to witness the explosion of emotion. The warning alarm sounded and their ears. Didn’t matter. They had nowhere to go. The visual cone from the red dot stretched and enveloped the fire team. A disappointed buzz came from the WarFace.

The DI’s profile inserted itself over the other. “You evolutionary cul-de-sacs have failed! Go back to the last goal and do it again.”

Dozer’s posture collapsed in delicious defeat.

The DI’s voice came over the comm again “More than that, nobody likes a smartass. Because of your smartassery, Private Buttstroke, you get to run two laps around boot camp while everyone else is taking their downtime tonight.”

A roar appeared in Buttstroke’s ears. His thundering heart pushed his blood through them. Scalding heat rushed from his chest. He ground his teeth.

“Son of a fucking whore,” Buttstroke said out loud under his breath.

“I heard that.” The DI sounded like a substitute teacher. “Make that four times around boot, and you better get back before firewatch starts, because you’re first up tonight. Do you understand Private Buttstroke? And the answer had better be, ’Sir, yes, sir.’”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Buttstroke sent it out over the comm. He hoped none of the frustration came through.

Asswipe snickered behind him.