The Escape
18:19 Ship Time

Seeing that they were dead, Anja leaned her arm around the doorway where Mason and her sister could see it, and then gave a thumbs up. After that, Ben and I immediately got to work dragging the two bodies down to the second floor, while Anja gathered up their guns. Unfortunately the roof the idiots were on wasn’t as sloped as the one on the factory was, so the blood pooled under them, rather than away from them.

It wasn’t all bad. The man we assumed as Idiot Number One had a submachine gun reminiscent of an MP5 or UMP in terms of looks, but was firing another unrecognizable caliber. He also had a spotter’s scope, which was like my monocular scope but more sophisticated, so I handed it over to Anja. With it, she would be able to spot for Mason or her sister in the future.

As for Idiot Number Two, he had quite a bit more on him. He only had only one weapon which was a suppressed bullpup-style gun, with the magazine behind the pistol grip rather than in front of it, as was common with the majority of firearms. It also had a nice-looking variable-zoom scope attached to it, but it was hard to test it out inside of the building.

Unless there was some chemical that could easily remove blood from fabric, the rigs the two idiots wore were now useless. They did protect the armored vests the two of them wore, so we grabbed them as well. The best item they had on them, however, was the radio they used to talk with the rest of their team. I grabbed that and stored it in the duffle bag that Ben was carrying, for now. Mason would have to decide what to do with it later.

“Did they not have any backpacks?” I asked, noticing that neither of them was wearing one.

“Maybe on the roof?” Anja asked. “They could’ve taken them off up there while they were waiting. The noise we heard up above might’ve been them going to grab them before they came down here.”

“I’ll go check,” I whispered. “You two go down and secure the entrances. If they had any backpacks, I’ll bring them down so we can sort through them, and then we need to search for the tunnels they were talking about.”

They both nodded, heading downstairs while I headed back up. I grabbed my monocular and peaked my head up high enough so I could check the treeline before moving out in the open. Not spotting anything, I moved onto the roof while staying low. Just because I didn’t see anyone didn’t mean that no one was there.

I found the two backpacks in a corner, and grabbed the two of them before heading downstairs. Anja kept an eye out with her new spotter’s scope while Ben and I went through the backpacks. There wasn’t a whole lot there, there only being some cigarettes, food, water and ammo, but more ammo was always good. The backpacks were relatively small, anyways, so I rolled them up and put them inside of Anja’s backpack.

Ben took up his position again and then I looked around the house for the entrance to the tunnels. We had thoroughly checked all of the buildings on this side of the street except for this one, so it was either here or it was nearby. It wouldn’t make sense for them to set up on this building unless they had a quick way to escape in a hurry.

I didn’t find anyone on the first floor, and nothing in the basement by the time I heard movement upstairs. Heading back up, I saw that Mason and Sonja had arrived.

“Nicely done,” Mason said. “I assume you’ve sorted through the bodies already?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Each of them had a single gun, one with a submachine gun and the other with a bullpup-like gun. We stripped their armor off of them, along with all their magazines and anything else they had. So we’ve got two additional vests and backpacks, along with some spare weapons. Ben, you wanna give him the radio?”

Nodding, he reached into the duffle bag and handed the radio to Mason. “They were talking to someone else before they stood up and got taken out. Nice shooting, by the way. Apparently there are tunnels nearby that lead to wherever the guys they were talking to were holed up. We don’t know where it is, but Jonathan was searching the building before you two arrived.”

“Unless there is a secret door, it isn’t in here.”

“I think I know where it is,” Mason replied. “Did you get an idea of how many more guys there were still alive?”

“Nope, just the one guy spoke on the radio, but he is probably part of a group that is watching the front of our base, waiting for us to return.”

“Well this is going to suck,” Sonja said. “How are we going to come and go with a team watching the front of our base?”

“By making it not worth it for them in the slightest. The front of our base is facing out of the forest, so we shouldn’t run into anyone on our way back,” Mason said, taking the map out of one of his pockets and spreading it out on the floor. Grabbing a flashlight, he turned it on and began going over the map.

“So our base is at the edge of the forest, facing away from it, which is good for us. It means that there shouldn’t be anyone else waiting in the forest. There are some buildings within half a kilometer though, as well as some hills, so we’ll want to check those out as soon as we’re in line of sight of them. I’m really regretting not buying a thermal scope now because it would make this a lot easier.”

Mason went over the plan for how we would approach the situation. We were going to head directly to the forest to loot the first two people we killed, before using the forest to provide cover as we moved up. We wouldn’t be taking our original route through, however, because it would be easy to spot us as we were moving through. Instead, we would be heading about one hundred feet deeper into the forest and only move to the edge occasionally, to look around.

Once we got close to our base, we would be moving really slowly, meaning that we would be lucky if we killed the guys before it got dark. We would absolutely push to get it done before then because none of us had night vision, nor did we want to bumble around in the night waiting for the sun to come back up.

As a result, exploring the system of tunnels would need to wait. If the leader of their group tried to get in touch with the two idiots and they didn’t respond, then he would probably know that the tunnels were compromised and have someone watch them. They could be trapped or someone could be watching them right now, for all we knew.

Once everything was sorted and Mason had looked over our two new guns, we rushed across the street into the very first building we had searched when we first passed through. The car battery was gone, as expected, but we figured it would be after over three weeks had passed.

We were extra vigilant this time since we knew another team was hunting us. Mason set up his rifle where he could watch over us like he did when we were heading over to the factory. When he was ready, we all ran across the open until we got to the other side. Once there, we spread out making sure no one was around, while Sonja set up her rifle on a fallen log and covered his approach. We didn’t hear a thing and soon we were back together as a group.

We headed over to the two guys we killed next and proceeded to strip them of everything useful. Like the idiots on the roof, these two guys were wearing rigs that were soaked in their own blood, so we tossed those after gathering any ammo or anything else. We found two grenades on one of them, in addition to his magazines, but not much more than that. We also got the radio that one of them had, finally giving us the means to communicate over distances.

Mason put his radio in the special pocket made for it, and then helped Sonja put the other in her pocket. For now, the two snipers in the group would be the best options for the radios, as it would allow them to split up and cover different angles, while still coordinating with one another.

Aside from those items, we also received another spotter’s scope, and another long range sight. Instead of having a submachine gun like Idiot Number One had, this spotter carried along an assault rifle with a red dot, rather than a scope. As for the sniper, he was carrying a suppressed sniper rifle, similar to the one that Mason was using. Both barrels were chambered in the same round, so Mason swapped his sniper rifle for the silenced one, giving his to me instead. Now all of us had three guns a piece, though we would probably be dropping most of those off, assuming we got back. Mason took a few minutes to make sure that his new sniper rifle was zeroed properly before we moved, taking a couple of shots at the buildings we had just come from in the process.

We moved quickly for the first portion of the trip before staying put as Mason moved towards the edge of the forest to take a look around. After he was set up, he radioed us to continue moving for about fifty meters before stopping so Sonja could do the same thing he did. This way we would slowly advance forward while someone was watching for opposing snipers. If we did end up getting spotted, then either Sonja or Mason would be able to provide covering fire so we could get into safety.

We waited for Mason to catch back up to us before we moved another fifty meters closer to our base. Mason had gone to set up, and we were wondering what took so long for Sonja to catch back up with us. It hadn’t taken long at all the previous time, but it had reached the five minute mark before we started getting worried. Until we heard the shots, that is.

While they timed it perfectly when they took out the two guys in the forest and then the other two on the roof, this time it was easy to determine that two snipers had fired. Mason’s new rifle sounded much different than his old one did, primarily because of the suppressor. A suppressor works by reducing the speed and pressure of the gas generated whenever you fire, using baffles that run the length of the suppressor. The heated gas is captured by those baffles, which slows and cools it, both quieting the weapon while also eliminating muzzle flashes.

Confident that they had taken out another two man team, we sat knelt down on one knee before waiting for them to return. That took another ten minutes or so, as they were probably watching to see if anyone was flushed out by the shots. Apparently none had, because there were no more shots and they appeared one after the other.

“We took out another team up on a hill about five hundred meters away. There could be more though, so we’re going to continue doing this until we’re a few hundred meters past our base. We’ll make sure to drop off our backpacks nearby though, just so we don’t need to carry the extra weight around,” Mason said.

“We’re not going to loot the two bodies?” Ben asked.

Mason shook his head. “Nope, it’s way too open. Maybe we could head out after nightfall if we had night vision, but right now we would be spotted too easily. Sonja is actually the one who spotted them. They were using bushes for cover, and only the barrel was sticking out of the bush.”

Once we knew what was going on, Mason set back up while Sonja moved with the rest of us for fifty or so meters before moving off to find a place to set up. Over the next four hours, we slowly crept forward a little bit at a time, stopping whenever we were far enough for either Mason or Sonja to set up and scour the area for targets. We had ditched our backpacks after about two and a half hours, which made it easier to move, but it was still slow going.

Eventually Mason called it because we were about three hundred meters away from our base, and hadn’t found anyone else. We made much better time heading back, only taking about fifteen minutes or so at a slow walk. We easily could have made it back within five minutes, but there was always the possibility that we had been followed.

Mason did end up setting up in a good spot about one hundred meters to the West of our base, while Sonja stayed with us so we could stay in contact. Once he had spent around five minutes there, he told us to move as a group and head for the base. If there was anyone else lying in wait, then it would draw them out and Mason would be able to kill them.

Being so close to our base, it also wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we died, because we would spawn close enough to gather all our stuff, after the cooldown period. It took a minimum of one hour to respawn, but if you died too many times too quickly, that could increase up until a one week respawn.

“Okay, not seeing anything so you guys should be clear. Start heading towards the base and let me know when you’re inside.”

“Affirmative,” Sonja replied, and we began moving.

As soon as we were within ten meters of the treeline, each of us started running. We wanted to get inside as quickly as possible, just in case we did end up missing someone. It turned out that we did, because as soon as we exited the treeline, shots began impacting the trees and the dirt around us. We kept running though, as it was too late to turn around and we were already halfway to the entrance.

They proved to be extremely lousy shots, however, because they were firing for a good ten seconds or so and didn’t hit a single shot. Soon there was one quiet shot followed by another, before everything went silent.

“That was fucking scary, but we made it,” Sonja said before chuckling nervously. “Those guys definitely need to work on their aim though.”

“I bet,” he replied. “I think we can get their stuff, actually. Drop off your rigs and backpacks and weapons inside the base, and then split up into two groups. Sonja, lead whoever goes with you to the first two bodies, and I’ll lead the other two to the others. Worst case is that you four need to wait to respawn, best case is we get some additional weapons and armor.”

We ended up doing that. It was Ben and Sonja and Anja and myself as we ran across the open ground to get to the bodies. Two of them were on a hill that camouflaged the snipers well, while the other two were in a building even further back. The two in the building were rather stupid about things, which is probably why they missed their shots.

Each of them had semi-automatic rifles with scopes and bipods on them, but neither of them elected to actually use the bipods. The worst part about it was that there was a big conference table in the middle of the room. If they moved that into the right spot, then both of them would have been able to lie down and extend the bipods while looking out the windows, giving them the best possible accuracy. As it was, they were probably trying to hold their rifles up and snipe at targets that were hundreds of meters away.

Thankfully they weren’t completely stupid. Their backpacks were on the conference table, along with a few other items which included a radio. We didn’t bring anything with us, so the backpacks would be useful for bringing stuff back. Before investigating the backpacks themselves, we began going through one guy’s equipment before moving onto the other.

One of the men was a Kukawu, which were bigger and stronger than Orks, giving us an incredibly hard time as we attempted to roll him over. We ended up doing it though and removed his rig and armored vest. The rig was bloodsoaked, as was usual, but the vest was in perfect shape, Mason having hit two more headshots.

Once we had everything gathered, we switched channels and radioed Mason to let him know we were on our way out. The other two bodies were much closer to the base, so the other group had already made it back. We ran back as quickly as we could, wanting to get back into cover. Anja was carrying less weight so she made it back and started down the steps while I was still twenty meters or so behind her. When I finally got to the entrance, everything went dark.

“Oh goddamnit!”

Things got bright again a moment later, and I saw that I was back in the game lobby. It turned out that we didn’t get all of them after all. If I had to guess, the last ones remaining were the boss that we heard on the radio and whoever he had with him. Since the maximum team size was five people, that meant that we were dealing with two or three full groups.

Thankfully the timer seemed to be based off of in-game time, so it wouldn’t be long before I could head back in. Ben appeared about five minutes after I died, letting me know what was going on.

“Mason ended up finding the guy that killed you, but he was about a kilometer away in a dark room on the top floor. He wasn’t able to kill him, but he definitely got him to move. Right now he and Sonja are coordinating so he can get back to the base. She’ll set up her rifle on the steps in our base and then provide some cover fire so he can make it back. It will be a bitch leaving our base next time we play though.”

“Maybe not. I can’t see each base only having one entrance. It would be way too easy to grief people if they can only come out of one entrance. I’m betting that we’ll find an escape hatch, or access to the tunnels, once we break into the next portion of the base. If not, I’ll see if we can get some help from Retsas. Now that we have a radio, we’ll be able to contact them. It might take a while to find the right channel, but they’re probably monitoring at least one unencrypted channel.”

“That’s true,” he nodded.

We continued to chat while we waited for the countdown to reach zero. With about twenty minutes left, Mason and the twins appeared alongside us.

“So, how was dying?” Mason asked.

“Just an immediate black screen,” I replied. “I was expecting it to be worse, but maybe it was too traumatic for people if it was more realistic.”

“Or it could be the fact that your head almost exploded,” he said. “The guy shot you in the back of the head with a pretty big bullet. It went right through and then embedded itself in the sloped concrete ceiling.”

“So everyone else is safe back in the bunker?”

“Yup. You were pretty much there already, and your body fell all the way down the steps. Almost crushed Anja, but she got out of the way in time.”

I nodded. “I was talking with Ben, but I’m thinking that we’ll have access to a secondary entrance once we get into the main part of the base. I just don’t see there not being one, as a group could easily wait for a team to leave their base.”

“You’re probably right, but this team knew about the tunnels, so they could’ve had a guy down there watching it as well. It’s a lot easier to clear a tunnel than it is to push out of a small entrance, so that isn’t an issue though.”

“So how did the rifle fare when I fell down the steps? Not well, I imagine?”

“Oh, the rifle is fine. The scope, on the other hand, is totally fucked. They’re not made to have over two hundred sixty pounds of dead weight fall on top of them.”

I laughed. “I imagine not.”

As soon as the countdown had expired, the five of us logged back into the game. I went over to the main hatch to look at my body, but found that it had completely disappeared.

“Huh. I didn’t know that was a thing, but it makes sense. Rotting bodies and skeletal remains would be all over the place,” Ben said. “It is odd that the blood remained though.”

Before going through all of our loot, we had one more thing to do. Mason went over and grabbed his backpack and began pulling out the charge that Olnain had made for us. It was in four different pieces and would create a two foot wide by four foot tall rectangular hole so we could access the rest of our base. Olnain assured us that it wouldn’t do damage to anything on the other side, but we were still a little worried about that.

The charge had double-sided tape already attached to it, so after making sure that the frame was put together and it was fixed where he wanted it, he inserted the detonator. It was a shaped charge, which meant that the blast was meant to go in one direction, but we weren’t taking any chances. This was our first time ever using any explosives, so we wanted to be at a distance. It was entirely wireless, so all five of us walked outside of the main hatch. When we were ready, Mason flipped up the safety and then triggered the explosion.

The bang was very loud, even with each of us holding our hands over our ears. Once it had quieted down, we walked inside to see a wall of smoke. Fanning it away from us with our hands, we walked over to see if it had worked. When we turned the corner, there was a big gaping hole where the door used to be.

“Well, that’s one way to do it. Olnain does some damn nice work,” Mason said.

We turned on our flashlights and walked through one by one, making sure not to touch the sides which were still a little toasty. Olnain said as much, but the door had, indeed, fallen into the room as the shaped charge cut perfectly around it. It would be a pain in the ass to move the door which likely weighed several hundred pounds, but that would be a job for another day.

There was a long central room that had four doors and two hatches coming off of it. At the far end of the room, maybe forty feet away, was a hatch that had ‘Exit’ above it. It was clearly locked from the inside, which meant that we wouldn’t have to worry about someone else opening it. Even though they couldn’t enter the base itself, that didn’t mean that they couldn’t shoot into it or throw grenades at us. We also held off on opening it, for now. When we did open it we would probably leave someone at the base while the rest of the team went through the tunnels until we found it. Once we were sure it was clear, then we would open it. There was a screen beside the door which made it seem like you could hook up a camera, but it was currently smashed to bits and would need to be replaced.

The main room was barren, if a little dusty, so we went from room to room, opening the doors so we could see what was inside. The first one we opened led to a hall, though not a particularly long one. It had five doors coming off of it, though, so it seemed like the base was bigger than we ever thought it would be.

We found that four of the rooms coming off this hallway were quarters for anyone who might be down here, but it was odd that each of the four rooms had two bunk beds each. The frame of each bunk bed was in perfect condition, though the mattresses would need to be replaced before we could ever sleep on them. The fifth room at the end of the hall, was a communal bathroom and shower, though I highly doubted we would use the latter part of it, or if we did it would be one at a time.

“Why are there so many beds?” Ben asked. “I thought there could only be five people per team.”

“Me too,” Mason replied. “It could be that these bunkers were designed to hold more people, but they put the limit at five people per team. Or I’m just missing something and more than just our team can enter this bunker. We’ll have to do some research. Onto the next one?”

We nodded and went back up the steps, making sure to close the doors as we went.

The next door on the left led to the kitchen and the accompanying pantry slash freezer. We would need to get power before we could keep anything frozen or do any cooking, but everything was there.

The first door on the right-hand side led to what was clearly a clinic. There were shelves and cabinets for medicine, as well as a couple of stretchers in the middle of the room. The stretchers were in disrepair and the shelves and cabinets were empty, but it would be where we performed any surgeries or looked at someone’s wounds, if they got hurt.

The final room on the right was a workshop. It was the biggest room by far, after the main room, and had a number of shelves along the sides, with a long workbench in the middle. There were no tools in sight, but it was a very good place to work on things... once we had things to work on.

“Hey, what’s this for?” Sonja asked, holding up a keycard.

“No clue. Must be used for something if it’s in here. Keep an eye out for anything to swipe it through,” Mason answered.

“You mean like that?” Ben asked, pointing to the one that was next to the hatch with the ‘Exit’ sign.

The rest of us left the room, and sure enough there was an electronic lock. Sonja swiped the card through it, but nothing happened. Mason started grumbling about needing more explosives, but Anja put an end to that.

“It probably just requires power, right?” Anja asked. “It would be really easy for someone to access all of their base right away if they knew what they were doing. This way there are a few different things they need, rather than just throwing explosives at everything.”

“Well, throwing explosives at everything works a lot of the time, but you’re right. That means that we’ll need to find a generator and get it back here, along with fuel to keep it running. That isn’t going to be fun.”

“I thought you said that there would be some useful stuff back here we could use? I mean, all we got was more space, which is nice, but that’s it, really,” I said.

“That’s the information I got, but maybe it isn’t a guarantee. So I think we’ll use the workshop to store our weapons and armor for now, as it has more than enough shelving, and that workbench is perfect for working on our guns.”

We got started on that right away, bringing all of our guns and backpacks over to the workshop before spreading everything out. It would give us a good idea of what we had, as well as anything we might need.

It was a little ridiculous to see how many guns we had now. In a single day we had gone from having seven to having nineteen. We purchased three of those, but found the nine, ensuring that we would have something to use if we died and lost a bunch of stuff. Our armor situation was just as good, having a total of eighteen vests or plate carriers to work with. We didn’t have as many rigs or backpacks, since those got bloodsoaked a lot of the time, but they were cheap and we could always buy more when we ran out.

Along with the weapons and armor, I also grabbed the two cases containing our credits and our barter tokens, setting both of them on the shelf at the far end of the room. With nothing else to do in-game, we logged out for the night.

*****

Only a few hours had passed in the real world, so we decided to stop by our rooms to see if the boxes had been delivered yet. They had, and Ryx wasn’t kidding when he said there would be a lot more parts available. There were three boxes stacked outside each of our rooms, each the exact same size as the previous one we had received.

Mason certainly didn’t waste any time, pulsing his mana at the door to the room he shared with Ben as he bent down to pick up the first of his three boxes. I moved my three boxes in my room as well, before heading to find my mom and Vixa. There was no big rush to assemble a weapon right away. Besides, I had slightly more important things to do, like work on my Telekinesis and level up some Precognition to slow Abi’s growth some more.

With my mornings and afternoons being so busy, I had begun leaving Vixa with my mom and Imuna as soon as we were done with breakfast. When I was done with everything for the day, I would go and find her and then the two of us would retreat back to my room for the night. It had taken a few days, but I had learned that there were TVs in everyone’s room. They all received signals both from Earth, and from many of the civilizations that called the Scutum-Centaurus Arm home. Apparently there were tens of thousands of channels, though I wasn’t planning to count them all.

With Vixa lying down on my chest and the remote in one hand, I would flip through the channels, checking things out, all while I was leveling up Precognition. Well, until yesterday when I was finally able to use telekinesis. I could use telekinesis to flip through the channels, leaving both hands available for petting and scatching Vixa. She seemed to enjoy it.

Once Vixa and I got back to my room, I realized that I didn’t see the old weapons crate anywhere in my room. Ryx said that it would be picked up at the same time that the new ones were delivered, but it was a little bit odd that the new ones were left outside while the old one was taken. I wasn’t worried about anyone entering my room when I wasn’t there, as anyone doing anything nefarious would be in store for a pretty nasty surprise.

She hopped up on the bed and began her nightly bath while I headed to the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I was done, I undressed down to my underwear and slid into bed, turning on the TV as I did so. The best part about telekinesis is that I never had to actually lift up the remote off the nightstand. It just stayed there and I was able to manipulate the buttons to change the channel and raise or lower the volume.

I was still getting the hang of moving more than one item at a time using telekinesis, so I grabbed one of the heavier orbs and began moving them around. I was sure not to bring the orb anywhere near the bed. I had fallen asleep the night before only to immediately get woken up when the orb hit the floor with a thud, scaring Vixa.

Once she was done cleaning herself, Vixa walked over and climbed onto my chest, settling down while we watched the news. It was pretty interesting hearing about things going on in the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, including details of the ongoing Scyftan-Confederation war. I had been shocked when I was able to understand what the anchors were saying, since there wasn't a translator like there was in The Escape and Battlestate.

It made sense though. My parents had spoken to me in Scyftan for the first three and a half years of my life. When I asked my mom and dad about it, they said that a block was put in place at the same time that the shield around my mind was added, and protein markers were injected. It was all about blending in as seamlessly as possible. Young children aren’t particularly quiet, and one of Dhir’s agents happened to be around, it wouldn’t be good.

I still wasn’t able to understand any of the other languages I heard in different broadcasts, so it looked like I would be spending quite a bit of time learning different languages in the future. Fortunately there was someone who could help reduce the amount of time that would take. My mom had totally forgotten about the block she had placed in my mind so I couldn’t understand or speak the Scyftan language. While she was removing it she told me to talk to Abi about some help with languages.

Like she did with the layout of the ship and the information about actually flying ships, Abi could actually download information directly to my brain through our bond. So she could download the languages of every species that calls the Milky Way home, but I still wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation, even having that information. It would be like absorbing the contents of a dictionary; you know what the words mean, but you don’t know the grammar or nuance that goes along with it. I could draw on my knowledge of the words, but accidently insult someone by putting them in the wrong order or leaving something out.

She could also theoretically download everything to do with Krav Maga or Ikwar Kun, though that wouldn’t help me fight at all. I wouldn’t have any of the muscle memory that I would get by learning it naturally, which would result in me getting my ass handed to me. She would actually have to have that knowledge herself, which is impossible, unless she learned it from me first. What is a massive ship going to do with Krav Maga or Ikwar Kun, though?

---

Somewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy, enroute to the Mezotis System
Jonuth Kidravia’s Ship - Abi
6:35 Ship Time
August 30, 2019

When I woke up to the alarm in the morning, the TV was off and it was no longer visible, despite me falling asleep while watching it. The same thing had happened the past few days, which was Abi turning things off when they weren’t actually being used. I wasn’t sure if she was doing it just in my room or every room, but it was a good idea when she ran off mana rather than energy. Every last ounce of mana regeneration would be needed for an emergency and while a single TV didn’t use much mana, hundreds of TVs did. That wasn’t including everything else that needed to be powered.

If we were in a battle or were about to be, Abi actually had a low-power mode, which shut off all power to the big power drainers, such as refrigerators, stoves and other appliances. The lights would also switch from the way they are normally, to an incredibly low-light setting. With it on, a human wouldn’t be able to see their hand in front of their face, but a Scyftan who shifted their eyes to those of an owl or another animal with good night vision would be able to see perfectly. The bridge and other essential areas would be brighter, but nowhere near the normal brightness.

Getting up, I first hit up the bathroom before grabbing a clean set of gym clothes. Once I was dressed, I sat on the bed and waited for Vixa to finish. She had been a little bit spoiled since we began the trip to theMezotis system, which resulted in her not eating all of her breakfast in anticipation of some mess food. When I noticed what she was doing, I would sit and wait until she was done before opening the door. The longer she took, the longer it would take before we got to the mess.

She ran over to the door as soon as she finished eating and drinking and waited for me to open it. When I did, she shot out of the room almost as if out of a cannon. She had followed me the first few times we went to the mess, but now she knew the route like the back of her paw and could make it there without any issue. Her tails, which were moving like crazy, certainly helped with that as she was able to scan her surroundings, mapping the hallways as she moved.

I waved at my friends, sisters and Tessa, who were already sitting down and eating, but headed directly over to the buffet line to grab some breakfast. Once my plate was full and I got something for Vixa, we both walked over and joined them.

“Morning,” I said as I sat down.

Vixa jumped up beside me and put a paw on my arm as if we wanted to get my attention. Laughing, I grabbed her small plate and sat it down on the bench beside me.

“Morning,” Mason replied. “So I figured out why there were so many beds in our base in The Escape. Well, more accurately, your sisters let me know. While individual teams can only have five people, a faction can have a great deal more. Araku is the leader of her own faction, which controls the town of Retsas. It is likely that Retsas is her faction’s base. Rather than be underground, it is above ground.”

“Interesting,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee. “So does the size of a base expand on its own or are there a bunch of floors we haven’t gotten to yet?

“The latter,” Aleena said. “Mason was saying that you came across a door requiring a keycard, but were lacking the power to open it. I’ve heard, and this may or not be true, that behind that door are two elevators and a set of stairs. Once you’ve powered up the base then some of those floors will become accessible to you, while others will be harder and harder to access as you go deeper.”

Lucille nodded. “Apparently you’ll need to fix things as you go, which is why factions are kind of a big deal. The more people you have in your faction the easier it is to advance your base. You may not be able to house everyone if you grow too fast initially, but you’ll be able to send groups out to get materials to fix things, or pool your money and barter tokens to buy things that only the traders have.”

“Do you know what sort of things we’ll need to fix?”

“No idea,” Aleena said, shaking her head. “We haven’t even gotten past the hatch into the main part of our base yet. We’ve attempted to come back from the closest town a few times with acetylene and oxygen tanks, but we always die on the way back, seemingly from incredibly lucky shots. We tried spreading out so if the tanks get hit then only one person dies or gets hurt, but we’ve just gotten mown down afterward. Maybe we’ll get luckier with a shaped charge like you guys used.”

“We’ll probably have to get quite a bit more money for that,” Tessa said. “We’ve had no problem buying or finding weapons thus far, but a shaped charge is going to cost a lot, especially if we need to have one made.”

“How about you find a map and determine where Retsas is and then come and join us?” I asked. “It would certainly help with the other group that has it out for us.”

“It might be possible, depending on how close together our two groups are. It makes me wonder how you actually move across the planet if you’re sort of tethered to your base, since it is your respawn point,” she said.

“Oh! I think I saw something about that,” Alexis said. “When you’re logged into the game but haven’t actually spawned in, I think there is a button that allows you to abandon your base. Once you’ve done that, you’ll spawn at the closest town you’ve already discovered. That way we could make our way from town to town until we meet up.”

The four of them agreed to check it out and let us know. Finishing up breakfast, my friends, sisters and I made our way to the gym to meet with Kiri for our Krav Maga lessons. The things she had shown us the previous week were more of a taste, and today we would get into the basics of the art and then move on to more and more complicated things as time went on.

“Good morning!” Kiri said as we walked through the door.

We greeted Kiri and then took a seat on the mat.

“Alright, before we get started today, it’s time for a brief history lesson. The creator of Krav Maga was a man named Imi Lichtenfeld. Growing up, he was a wrestler, boxer and gymnast, competing in many tournaments at the national and international level. Then comes World War Two. Being Jewish, he was forced to flee from his home in Slovakia after the Germans began their occupation. After serving with distinction in the Free Czech Legion in North Africa, he later moved to Israel when leaders recognized his fighting prowess.”

“In 1944, he began teaching members of the military and the police how to fight, using the techniques he had created earlier in his life. When Israel was formed in 1948, Lichtenfeld joined the IDF, serving as an instructor. Omar was in the Israeli military at the time, and had the opportunity to learn from and work with Lichtenfeld over the following years. In 1964, both Lichtenfeld and Omar retired from the army. Lichtenfeld to open up schools and train civilians, and Omar to pass on his knowledge to Scyftans so that we may add it to our repertoire.”

“When Omar was teaching us we didn’t use any formal clothing as other martial arts usually do, but we did keep the belt system as it changed over the years. As such, we’ll be starting with the basics. For this weekend all of you will be considered to be white belts. Over the next three days we’ll be working on four different techniques. Today we’ll work on two of them, and we’ll get to the other two tomorrow. Sunday will be a day of sparring. You’ll be wearing protective equipment and practice against one another.”

“Once I’ve determined that you have all four techniques down, then you will advance to the next belt, which is yellow. Are you ready?”