We were trapped at a dead end, deep inside the guts of the skyscraper. The pulsing red emergency lights made the corridor feel like the throat of some great metal beast. Before us lay the path to the bridge, to the objective, to certain death. Behind us was nothing.
The rest of our team was gone. The score was a testament to their failure and Viper's terrifying skill. It was just the two of us left. Me and Anya. Against him.
Anya slumped against the wall, her breath coming in ragged bursts. She looked defeated. "We can't win this one, Leo," she said, her voice heavy. She was a survivor, a pragmatist. She knew when a fight was lost. "We stay hidden. We wait out the timer. We lose the match, but we live. We get our base rewards and we try again next time. It's the smart play."
She was right. It was the logical choice. The survivor's choice. In this world where death was real, living to fight another day was always the right answer. My objective, from the very first moment I woke up in this nightmare, was to survive.
But I looked at the flashing objective on my screen. [CAPTURE POINT B TO WIN]. I looked at the score. [BLUE TEAM: 250 | RED TEAM: 950]. They were so close to winning.
And I thought of Viper's message. The one that had chilled me to the bone. You took my brother.
A strange mix of emotions churned inside me. Guilt, for the life I had taken. Fear, of the man hunting me. And a new feeling, one I did not expect: responsibility. I had started this. The cold logic of survival was fighting against a strange, powerful urge to see this through. To end it.
"I have a plan," I said. The words came out before I had even fully formed it in my mind.
Anya looked at me, her eyes narrowed with skepticism. "A plan? Leo, he's up there with a high-caliber rifle waiting for us to show our faces. What plan could possibly work?"
"It's a crazy plan," I admitted, my mind racing, putting the pieces together. "And it will probably get me killed. But it's our only shot."
I explained it to her, my voice low and urgent. "You're right. He's watching the bridge. He's focused on it completely. He's waiting for us to make a run for it from the exit down here." I pointed down the corridor. "But he's not watching anything else. He's so focused on us, on me, that it's created a blind spot in his mind."
I unslung the heavy Phantom rifle from my back. It felt different now. Not alien. It felt like a tool. A key.
"I'm going to give him a target," I said, my voice determined. "But not the one he's expecting."
Anya stared at me, her mouth slightly open. She saw the look in my eyes. She understood. "You're insane," she whispered. But she did not try to stop me.
We went back to the elevator. I hit the button for the rooftops. "Good luck, Leo," she said, her voice soft.
"You too," I replied.
The elevator ride up was silent. I was not afraid. I felt a strange sense of calm. The doors opened, and the roar of the wind hit me again. I was back in his world.
I did not go to the same rooftop as before. I went to a different one, far from the objective, on the other side of the map. I found a spot where I had a clear, but very difficult, shot at Viper's nest on the central skyscraper. He was over 800 meters away. A nearly impossible shot.
I opened a private message channel to Anya. My fingers flew across the virtual keyboard.
[GET READY TO RUN TO B WHEN I FIRE.]
Her reply was instant. [DON'T DIE, NEWBIE.]
I took a deep breath. This was it.
I stood up.
I did not hide behind cover. I walked to the center of the rooftop and stood there, in the open. I made myself the biggest, most obvious target possible. A challenge. An invitation.
I saw it almost immediately. The tiny, distant glint of Viper's scope swung towards me. He had taken the bait. I knew I had only seconds.
I raised my Phantom rifle. My hands were perfectly steady. I was not aiming at Viper. His nest was too well protected. I was aiming at something much bigger.
Behind him, a massive communications tower rose from the top of the skyscraper. It was a huge structure of steel and cables, and it was held in place by thick, heavy support bolts.
Viper's final message flashed in my vision. He thought he had won.
[I HAVE YOU.]
I held my breath. I lined up the shot, not on Viper, but on the main support bolt of the tower, right where it connected to the roof. At the exact same moment I squeezed my trigger, I saw the muzzle flash from his rifle.
My world exploded in pure, white-hot pain.
Viper's bullet hit me square in the chest. The force was like being hit by a truck. It threw me backward off my feet. My HP bar on my HUD shattered, plummeting instantly. [HP: 100 -> 15].
My vision went red at the edges. A new status effect appeared: [BLEEDING EFFECT APPLIED]. My health was ticking down. 14... 13...
But my shot. My shot hit its mark.
Through the haze of pain, I saw my high-caliber round slam into the support bolt. The metal screamed and shattered. The massive communications tower groaned, a deep, terrible sound. It tilted. It leaned. And then it came crashing down, a slow-motion avalanche of steel, directly onto Viper's sniper nest.
The entire top of the skyscraper was engulfed in a massive explosion of collapsing metal and twisted concrete. It was a beautiful, terrible sight.
I lay on the rooftop, my chest on fire, my life bleeding out onto the cold concrete. I watched the destruction I had caused. On my minimap, I saw Anya's blue arrow. She was running. A desperate, heroic sprint across the now-uncontested bridge toward Point B.
A final notification appeared in my vision. It flickered, cutting through the red haze of my dying sight. It was not from the system. It was one last, corrupted message from Viper, sent in the fraction of a second before his world ended.
The message was just a single, garbled word, broken up by static.
[...why...br0th...er...]
The word made no sense. It felt like a question. A question I would never understand.
My health continued to tick down. My vision was getting darker.
[10 HP]... [5 HP]...
This was it. Permadeath. I had won the match, but I had lost my life.
[1 HP]...
My vision started to fade to black. At the very last second, as my existence balanced on a knife's edge, I saw Anya's blue arrow reach the center of the control point.
The HUD flashed with a system-wide announcement, bright and triumphant. [BLUE TEAM WINS].
And then, a new message appeared. A message I had never seen before. It was written in golden letters, and it overrode everything else on my screen.
[MVP PROTOCOL INITIATED... SYSTEM OVERRIDE... LETHAL DAMAGE NEGATED.]
My health bar stopped at 1 HP. The bleeding stopped. The blackness receded from my vision.
I was alive.
But what in the world was the MVP Protocol?