Gate 2 felt like a throat.
Too many people. Too much noise. Everyone trying to sound braver than they were.
FIELD 3 / 4 OVERLAY — LOAD TESTACTIVE WINDOW: 18:00–19:00REWARDS: x3NOTICE: UNSTABLE ZONES SUBJECT TO STERILIZATION
Barry read it again, like the words might change if he stared hard enough.
They didn't.
Lena slipped through the crowd to his left, hair tied back, med rig stripped down to essentials.
"You sure about this, goblin?" she asked.
"Absolutely not," Barry said.
"Good," she said. "Certainty gets you killed."
Kade arrived on his right, as unremarkable as ever. Rifle, plates, no flair.
"All three," he said. Not a question.
"Last chance to pretend you have better options," Jay's voice crackled in Barry's ear—an old headset patched into the collar feed.
"We're already in line," Barry murmured.
"Of course you are," Jay sighed. "Remember the marks."
Barry recited under his breath:
"Stay out of orange zones. If bots pull back hard, we leave. If sky brightens wrong, we leave. Riggs is a target of convenience, not a quest."
"Good rat," Jay said. "Try not to improvise."
Lena smirked. Kade's mouth twitched.
"Positions," Lena said.
They shifted without thinking:
Barry center, route-caller.
Lena left, close, med and pistol.
Kade right, half-step back, rifle for overwatch.
Not a squad. Definitely a formation.
The crowd near the front parted briefly.
Riggs stood there.
New armor, scarred cheek, the same rotten smile. Two heavies behind him. Rat-in-crosshair daubed on his pauldron like a logo.
He spotted Barry. Tilted his head.
Tapped his heart twice.
Mouthed: Friendly.
Barry looked away first.
Gate sirens rose.
Collars buzzed, harder this time.
FIELD MODE: LOAD TEST PARAMETERSWARNING: ESCALATED RESPONSE. DATA CRITICAL.
"Data," Barry muttered. "Great."
Metal screamed as the blast doors rolled up.
A wall of hot, dry air hit—a different smell this time. Less rot. More ozone.
They stepped over the yellow.
The world beyond was wrong.
It was Field 3's skyscraper bones jammed into Field 4's industrial guts. Towers stabbed up among stacked warehouses. Streets kinked at wrong angles where two maps had been glued.
The sky pulsed faintly with a grid of invisible lines Barry could feel in his teeth.
His HUD came alive:
T+00:01MODIFIERS: +RED-EYE ACTIVITY / +BOT AGGRESSION / RANDOMIZED HAZARDSREWARD MULTIPLIER: x3
"Eyes open," Kade said.
"Ears too," Lena added.
Barry's audio band was a storm: more drone hums than usual, servos whining, distant gunfire, metal on metal. Layers.
"Route," Kade prompted.
"Left off gate," Barry said. "Cut through mid offices, avoid main lane. Aim for south ramp—Jay's boring path."
"Kinky," Lena said. "Go."
They moved.
First corner, a Blue-Eye biped thundered past chasing something. Its lens flared red for a heartbeat, then snapped back to blue. It didn't look at them.
"See that?" Barry hissed.
"Red-eye purge directive," Lena said. "They're hunting their own lepers."
They ducked into a collapsed foyer. Immediate cover.
Stairs up, hall left, corridor right. NEXUS emergency strips flickered.
Barry listened.
Above: boots, three sets. Ahead: skitter-metal. Right: quiet.
"Right," he said.
They cleared a short corridor, slipped into an office with half walls blown out.
Loot was better already:
Two sealed medkits.
A crate of ration packs.
A compact oxygen unit.
Lena grabbed the medkits, tossed one to Barry.
Kade took a vantage at a broken window, scanning.
"Two groups already trading shots on main," he said. "Riggs' boys on the high lot."
"Mark it," Barry said. "We avoid."
He stowed the oxygen unit. Heavy, but x3 rewards meant it was stupid valuable.
T+04:13
"Next," Lena said.
They moved down, back into the street.
The overlay was meaner here: a warehouse façade bolted onto the side of a residential block, pipes veining brick, tarps flapping with no wind.
A quad-flyer zipped overhead, no flamer this time, but guns hot. It saw a cluster of Locals sprinting across open ground.
"UNAUTHORIZED PRESENCE," it blared.
The Locals scattered. Two weren't fast enough.
The drone hosed them down. Clean. No hesitation.
"Bots aren't pausing today," Kade murmured.
Barry noted that. On normal days, there was always a hair of lag. Today it was razor.
"Stick tight," Barry said. "We're background noise."
They hugged walls, cut behind a toppled cargo hauler. Barry raised a fist; they halted.
Ahead, at a three-way junction, a red-eye spider hung off a light pole like a bad ornament. Lens burning crimson.
It jittered, scanning.
"Path?" Lena whispered.
"Backtrack, one block north," Kade said. "Not worth it."
Barry's collar buzzed.
The spider's lens jerked.
For one second, its cone locked on Barry.
…B-RANER-3……NON-TERMINAL……EXCLUDE…
It snapped away like slapped, spun, and launched itself at a pair of armed runners cutting the opposite corner.
Screams.
Lena hissed between her teeth. "I hate that."
"Add it to the list," Barry said tightly. "Move."
They did.
First real sign of Riggs came ten minutes in.
T+10:07
They were slipping through a multilevel parking structure—a favorite route for smart rats—when Kade held up a hand.
"Voices above," he murmured.
Audio band picked them:
"—watch the south ramp—"
"—rat-boy's trio, I want them—"
Riggs.
Lena's mouth went thin.
"Keep low," Barry said. "He's playing net. We don't give him a clean angle."
"He's between us and Jay's pretty extract," Lena said.
"Other extracts exist," Kade said.
They slid down a different ramp, deeper into the overlay mash where Field 4's industrial warehouse had been welded onto the lower levels.
More hazards:
Steam vents belching scalding clouds.
Pools of chemical sheen.
NEXUS hazard signs blurred by extra overlays.
"Love what they've done with the place," Lena muttered.
Barry hit the map Jay had loaded. The clean route was turning orange at the edges: increasing red-eye activity, bot density.
"Jay's path is heating," Barry said. "He'll be swearing at a wall about now."
"Options?" Kade said.
"We kill Riggs," Lena said.
"Not on an uphill stairwell," Kade said.
"We angle," Barry said. He traced quickly. "Warehouse spine, cut emergency stairs, hit the mid extract. Riggs expects us to hug the south ramp."
"So we don't," Lena said.
They pivoted.
The warehouse spine was a canyon of metal shelves and overhead walkways.
It also held their first real PvE test of the run.
A pair of Blue-Eye bipeds herded a pack of smaller drones down the aisle, lenses flicking.
One stopped, head tilting.
Barry felt the buzz a fraction too late.
Its lens swung toward them.
SCAN: ANOMALY CLUSTEROBJECTS: B-RANER-3 / L-VOSS / KADE-IMANISTATUS: MONITOR
"Down," Kade snapped.
They dove behind a row of crates.
The bot didn't fire.
Instead, it pinged something upwards:
FORWARDING DATA TO: [REDACTED]
Then moved on.
"That is so much worse," Lena whispered.
"They logged us as a unit," Kade said quietly. "Congrats. We're canon."
Barry's heart hammered. "We keep moving."
He was about to step when something small bounced near his boot.
Cylinder. Painted white. Smiley drawn in marker.
Barry's brain connected the dots a fraction before it popped.
"Flash!" he yelled, turning away as the grenade went off in a brutal white flare.
His audio band howled.
Shouts from the next aisle:
"Friendly! Friendly down there?"
Riggs' voice, sing-song.
"Showtime," Lena muttered, blinking hard, getting behind cover.
Kade rolled the other way, sight already swinging.
"Positions," Barry rasped, blinking spots away. "We don't stay in the open."
"This your boring route?" Lena shot back.
"Adapt," Kade said. "Right shelf, three targets."
He fired twice. A scream. Someone dropped.
Riggs laughed.
"Atta boy, limper!" he called. "Knew you'd come play."
The load test roared on around them—bots hunting, red-eyes purging, distant explosions.
NEXUS had wanted data.
It had its anomaly cluster, its human predator, its escalating mess, all in one lane.
"Options?" Lena asked, low.
"We either break contact now," Kade said, "or commit and end him while the world's on fire."
Barry thought of Lissa's two terms.
Walk away if it feels wrong. Don't drag them with you.
He listened.
Bots weren't pulling back. No sky shift. No sterilization glow yet.
Just chaos. The kind Rounds were built from.
"Not wrong yet," he said. "We end him if he forces it. Fast."
Lena's lips peeled in something that wasn't quite a smile. "Finally."
"Fine," Kade said. "Then we do it clean."
Another flash bang clinked nearby.
This time Barry kicked it back around the shelf before it blew, earning a startled curse.
"Friendly, my ass," Barry muttered.
He checked his pistol, met their eyes.
"Riggs first," he said. "Then we get the hell out before NEXUS decides we're extra scenery."
They moved.
The test had become personal.
Somewhere above, in lines of code Barry couldn't see, something flagged the convergence:
ANOMALY CLUSTER + HOSTILE HUMAN NODE (RIGGS)OBSERVE RESPONSE // READY PURGE CONDITIONAL
But on the ground, it was just three goblins, a smiling bastard, and a machine god starting to lean in.
And none of them were backing off yet.