The Ghost's voice was a shard of ice in my ear, a digital phantom whispering my death sentence. "Let's see how you like being on this end of the scope."
The world narrowed to a single point of light: the glowing red optic of the Enforcer, fifty meters down the long, straight corridor. My body was frozen. Every nerve, every synapse screamed at me to dive for cover, but I was paralyzed, pinned in place by the sheer, personal horror of the moment. This was not a random player trying to claim a bounty. This was a piece of my own past, a manifestation of my own rage and ambition, given a perfect, robotic body. It was wearing my old skill like a skin, and it was pointing it at my head.
The Enforcer stood perfectly still. It didn't fire immediately. A human player would have taken the shot instantly. A machine should have. But it didn't. It was savoring the moment. It was an act of supreme cruelty. It wanted me to feel the absolute terror of being helpless, the same helplessness it must have felt while trapped as a powerless parasite inside my mind. This wasn't just an execution. It was revenge, served cold and calculated.
Anya broke the spell.
"Leo, MOVE!" she screamed, and her voice was a physical force. She shoved me hard in the center of my back.
The world exploded into motion. My frozen limbs unlocked. I stumbled sideways, my legs clumsy and unresponsive, my boots scraping on the metal floor. As I fell, the air beside my head cracked with a deafening supersonic roar. A bullet tore through the space where my skull had been a fraction of a second ago. I felt the heat of its passage on my cheek. It slammed into the metal wall behind me with a high-pitched shriek of tortured steel, leaving a glowing, molten crater the size of my fist.
He had missed on purpose.
The realization hit me with a fresh wave of terror. It was a warning shot. A demonstration of his perfect aim and his absolute control over the situation. He was showing me that he could have killed me. He was showing me that my life was in his hands, to be ended whenever he chose.
I crashed to the floor, my hands and knees scraping against the grimy metal. I scrambled behind a low maintenance conduit, a thick metal pipe that ran along the base of the wall. My heart was hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird trying to escape its cage. The pipe offered pathetic cover. It was maybe half an inch of old, rusted steel. It wouldn't stop a round from that rifle. It was a psychological shield, not a physical one.
CRACK!
Another shot. This one slammed into the conduit right in front of my face. The impact was a brutal, physical shock that traveled through the floor into my bones. Sparks showered over me, hot and sharp. The metal groaned and dented inwards, nearly splitting apart. He wasn't aiming to kill me yet. He was corralling me. Pinning me down. He was a master hunter, toying with his cornered prey. He was dissecting me piece by piece, mentally and physically.
"Anya, get back!" I yelled, my voice raw with panic. "You can't fight him!"
But Anya wasn't retreating. My partner, the pragmatic survivor, was advancing. She was moving towards the danger, not away from it.
She dropped to one knee behind a thick, concrete structural pillar a few meters ahead of me. She brought the Phantom SR-90 to her shoulder. Her movements were not as fluid or inhumanly perfect as the Enforcer's, but they were solid, determined. She was not a sniper, but she was a fighter. She was all grit.
"I'll draw his fire! You find a way out!" she yelled over the ringing in my ears. Her voice was a command.
She fired. The roar of her rifle filled the narrow corridor, a deafening thunder that dwarfed the sound of my pistol. It was a shot born of pure desperation, not precision. The bullet went wide, sparking harmlessly off the far wall, nowhere near the Enforcer.
But it worked. It was a direct challenge. The Enforcer's glowing red eye swiveled from my pathetic hiding spot to her. It had identified the greater immediate threat. It had identified the player holding the legendary weapon.
CRACK!
The Enforcer's counter-shot was instantaneous. The moment Anya fired, it fired back. There was no hesitation, no aiming time. Just a perfect, calculated response. Anya cried out, a sharp gasp of pain, and recoiled, dragging herself fully behind the cover of the thick pillar. The corner of the concrete exploded in a shower of gray dust and metal fragments from the rebar inside.
"Leg shot!" she grunted through our private comms channel, her voice tight with pain. "My real leg, not the cybernetic one. It's bleeding. A lot."
My stomach turned to ice. She was hurt. She was pinned down. I was hiding behind a useless piece of metal with only a basic pistol that was worthless at this range. We were going to die here, in this dark, forgotten corridor.
The Ghost's voice returned, a calm and cruel whisper directly in my ear. "She can't help you, Leo. No one can. Do you feel it? The panic? The feeling that the walls are closing in? The absolute certainty of your own death? This is just the beginning. I'm going to make this last a long time."
He was right. I was panicking. My mind was a storm of fear and adrenaline. I couldn't think straight. But his words… his smug, sadistic words… they ignited something else. A flicker of cold, hard anger. He was toying with us. He was arrogant. And players who got arrogant, who toyed with their food, made mistakes.
I couldn't beat him with a gun. My skill was gone. That part of me was dead. But my mind… my gamer's mind was still there. I had spent thousands of hours in virtual worlds, solving problems like this. I still knew how this game was played. I had to stop thinking like a victim. I had to stop cowering. I had to start thinking like a player.
I took a shaky breath and forced the panic down. I slowly, carefully, looked around, my eyes scanning every detail of the corridor. The pipes running along the walls. The electrical junction boxes. The emergency lighting fixtures that were now dark. This wasn't just a corridor. It was a map. A level. And every level has a weakness. Every boss has a pattern. I just had to find it before Anya bled out.