The creature’s figure blurred as it shot across the ground. It moved with a horrifying, insectile grace. The slate-grey chitin plates clattered like hail on a tin roof as it closed the distance in two heartbeats.

  [ALERT: (1) RAVAGER DETECTED (SCOUT)]

  [SECONDS TIL IMPACT: 0.8 SECONDS]

  [INCOMING STRIKE: TACKLE]

  [RECOMMENDATION: EVASIVE ROLL (LEFT)]

  Blue text cascaded down Riven’s visor, acting like a digital curtain between him and the monster trying to eat him.

  Thanks for the identification, Riven thought, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. I thought it was a very ugly dog.

  His mind was racing, but it wasn’t panic. The bond with Astrix the other day, had opened up his brain to the premium version. As the creature closed in, time seemed to stretch. Riven saw the tendons beneath the carapace pull taut. He saw the dust kicking up in high definition, rendered in perfect 8K resolution by the suit’s sensors.

  His brain was processing the creature faster than his suit was giving him it’s commands.

  Move.

  Riven threw himself to the left, It was a clumsy roll, mostly because he was fighting the urge to read the pop-ups.

  The suit, however, was a masterpiece. There was no whining of servos. The DAIR suit moved silently, amplifying his strength so smoothly it felt like the armor wasn’t even there. He could even feel the wind of the Ravager’s passing talons.

  He was alive. The HUD’s advice had worked. But it was boring. And sloppy. He was out of position, he was on the back foot, and the Lance held awkwardly against his chest.

  The Ravager skidded, gouging deep tracks into the duracrete. It turned with a shriek that the suit’s audio system mercifully muted to a dull roar. It lunged at him again.

  [INCOMING STRIKE: OVERHEAD]

  [KINETIC IMPACT: 4000 N]

  [RECOMMENDATION: BRACE AND BLOCK]

  I know, Riven thought, suppressing the urge to shout at the text. I can see it.

  He braced, raising the haft of his lance with both hands to catch the blow.

  CLANG .

  The impact was massive. If he had been in standard shock troop armor, his arms would have snapped like dry twigs. But the DAIR suit absorbed the shockwave. The lance in his hands didn’t waver for a second.

  Okay, so the gear is good. It’s the software that’s the problem. Riven noted.

  The Ravager recoiled, hissing in confusion as its claws bounced off the matte-black metal.

  [TACTICAL ADVISORY: RETREAT]

  The blue text flashed urgently, scrolling right over the Ravager’s exposed neck.

  Riven blinked, a flick of genuine irritation rising. The software must have been made by some noble afraid to get his hands dirty. It was acting like this was some turn-based duel.

  “I can’t see,” Riven muttered. “Stop trying to parent me.”

  The Ravager lashed out with a low sweep.

  [RECOMMENDATION: JUMP]

  I’m not a rabbit.

  Riven ignored the text and stepped toward the incoming talon. He planted his front foot, ignoring the flashing blue warning to retreat. He spun under the Ravager’s guard and used the motion to get beside the bug.

  Riven pivoted his hips, letting the suit amplify the torque and whipped the lance tip around in a tight, low arc. The length of the shaft allowed him to generate massive velocity akin to a whip.

  Thrummm.

  The lance caught the Ravager’s rear leg at the joint. There was resistance for a fraction of a nanosecond, then the top-tier tech did what it was paid to do. And the leg sheared off completely.

  The beast shrieked, buckling onto one side as its tripod collapsed. It thrashed, blue blood spraying the concrete.

  Riven seized the initiative, he vaulted over the thrashing limbs the suit carrying him through the air with an effortless grace and landed on the creature’s back. Resonance it was good to have top tier gear.

  “Sit,” Riven joked.

  He drove the spear tip through the back of the skull. The disruption field cracked the heavy bone plate and sank deep into the brain matter.

  The creature went limp instantly.

  Riven exhaled. He looked around for immediate threats, scanning the alleyway. Nothing. Just dust and silence.

  “System,” Riven said, standing on the corpse of the alien bug. “We need to have a talk.”

  [COMMAND UNRECOGNIZED]

  “I’m going to shoot you.” Riven took a few deep breaths. “Can I turn you off?”

  [FAQ: How to disable tactical assistance?]

  [VOICE COMMAND: “NAME” requests code alteration. STATE subsystem. CONFIRM: DISABLED]

  “Private Riven Holt requests alteration,” Riven sighted, wiping blue blood off his visor. “Recommendation. Off. Shut it off. Please.”

  [PROCESSSING…]

  [RECOMMENDATIONS: DISABLED]

  [USER DISCRETION ADVISED]

  “Thank the Resonance,” Riven muttered as the view cleared. “Finally, some peace and qui–”

  [ALERT: (40) RAVAGERS DETECTED (WARRIORS)]

  Riven froze. He stared at the red number blinking in the corner of his eye. He looked at the single dead bug at his feet. Then he looked back at the number.

  “Wait,” Riven whispered. “Did that say forty?”

  The rumbled started low, vibrating through the soles of his boots, before exploding into a cacophony of shrieks.

  From the dust clouds at the end of the street shapes emerged. They weren’t the scuttling pony sized horror he had just killed. They were darker, heavier, and covered in heavy carapace armor. Four arms protruded from their torsos, each ending in a pincer large enough to snap a man in half.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  There were at least forty of them.

  Usually, you drop a bunker buster bomb on these things. Or you sent a dragon. You didn’t send a twenty-year old astrophysics student with a pointy stick. Granted the stick was a lance, but you get the point.

  “Okay,” Riven squeaked. “Plan B.”

  He spun on his heel and sprinted.

  “Sergeant!” Riven yelled, his voice echoing in the empty helmet as he tore down the ruined street. “Sergeant Phillean! I apologize for the sarcasm earlier! I didn’t mean to call the biological nightmare a doggy! I respect the simulation! I respect your goals! I felt the pain from that roll! Feel free to eject me now! Any time works for me! But preferably that time is right now!”

  There was no answer. Just the thunder of one hundred and sixty clawed legs tearing up the pavement behind him. Riven glanced behind him. They were faster than him. Of course they were faster. Why was everyone he fought always faster than him.

  He looked for an exit. The street he was on was too open; he could be attacked from anywhere. To his right, a skeletal skyscraper stripped of its glass rose into the smog. The support beams were exposed, rusted steel.

  “As famously said,” Riven gasped. “I need the high ground. Or was it I have the high ground. Whatever.”

  He sprinted toward the steel beam. He knew the gloves were magnetic, but nobody had explicitly told him the boots were too. It was a hell of a time to test a hypothesis.

  “Please don’t just be for hands,” Riven prayed. “Please don’t be just for hands.”

  He didn’t slow down; he ran straight at the wall and jumped.

  CLANK.

  His feet stuck and stuck hard. The magnets engaged with such force that Riven nearly tripped over his own ankles, his faceplate lamming against the girder.

  “Oof. Okay. I stick. Nice.”

  He scrambled up, his orientation flipping. It felt strange running up the ninety-degree incline, his inner ear screaming that he was falling, but the suit ignored gravity. He reached the first setback, a flat industrial platform five stories up, and skidded to a halt.

  He spun around, leveling the lance.

  The swarm didn’t stop just because there was a cliff in front of them. The Resonance made sure that Riven never had it easy. They dug their claws into the steel and began to climb, a tidal wave of chitin and hate.

  The first Warrior crested the ledge. It hissed, rearing up on its hind legs to expose its massive chest.

  Riven shot forward, thrusting the lance dead center.

  CLANG.

  The weapon hit the thick chest plate and rebounded with a shock that jarred Riven’s arm even through the armor. The creature didn’t even flinch. It just looked annoyed, if a giant murder bug could look annoyed

  “That…” Riven wheezed, shaking his stinking hand. “That was false advertising. Sorry?”

  The Warrior backhanded him.

  Riven flew backward, skidding across the roof.

  [ARMOR INTEGRITY: 60%]

  [IMPACT: DETECTED]

  “No way, I detected it to.” Riven groaned, feeling his ribs ache. “Also, rude.”

  The Warrior charged. Riven scrambled up, but he was too slow. The creature was on top of him, claws raised high to crush him into paste.

  Riven panicked. His mind flashed to the DAIR suit lecture, didn’t they say he had zero-g thrusters.

  “Burn!” Riven yelled.

  With his yell, thrusters on his elbows fired off. Jets of blue energy erupted from the back of his triceps. His arm punched forward with a barely controlled rocket-assisted velocity. The lance tip slammed into the Warrior’s knee joint.

  CRACK.

  The armor held, but the joint didn’t. The leg snapped backward at a sickening angle that met a wet, popping sound. The Warrior shrieked and collapsed to one knee.

  Riven winced. “Ooh. That sounded crunchy. You might want to ice that.”

  He vaulted off the creature’s chest, using the leverage to jump off the industrial platform onto the skeleton of the building that rose into the smog. The Warrior tumbled off the side, falling back into the gathering swarm below.

  Riven looked at the HUD he had been ignoring.

  [ALERT: (143) RAVAGERS DETECTED (MIXED)]

  How in the Resonance was he supposed to win this? He probably should have asked out to log out. Not that Phillean would have told him. That bastard probably disable the quit button.

  Riven switched the lance to Rifle Mode as another Warrior hauled itself onto the platform beneath him.

  “Eat tungsten!”

  Thud-thud-thud.

  The high-desntiy rounds sparked off the chest of the second Warrior, leaving dents but no holes. The creature locked eyes with him and began scaling rapidly towards him.

  Riven stared at the weapon in betrayal. Phillean said these punch through Ravager armor. He said it was like cardboard. That is not wet cardboard. That is very dry tank armor.

  “Liar!” Riven shouted at the air, hoping Phillean could hear him. “You liar!”

  Riven adjusted his aim at the climbing beast and put a round through its eye. The back of the creature’s head blew out. It dropped onto the platforms more Warrior climbed over the edge. Eager to welcome the human to the party. The party being held in their stomach.

  “I hate parties,” Riven muttered. “I never know what to wear.”

  The platform shuddered again. The sheer number of the Warriors climbing up the side shook the steel like a wet dog. Riven looked up the skeleton structure disappearing into the thick layer of purple smog above him.

  “Okay,” Riven squeaked. “Up. Up is the only option. Stairs are for suckers.”

  He scrambled onto the vertical beam, his magnetic boots clanking rhythmically against the steel. It was a race. Below him, the Warriors were climbing with terrifying spee, their claws screeching against the metal like nails on a chalkboard the size of a cityblock.

  Then he hit the smog layer.

  Visibility dropped to zero instantly. The world became a suffocating soup. It was like climbing inside a chimney that someone was actively using. Not that Riven knew what that was like. He swears. Why does nobody believe him?

  Whump. Whump. Whump.

  Riven froze, clinging to the beam. That wasn’t a Warrior. That was the heavy, rhythmic displacement of air.

  Whump. Whump.

  [ALERT: AERIAL THREAT DETECTED]

  [DIRECTION: EVERYWHERE]

  “Helpful,” Riven hissed. “Very helpful. Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  A shape dived out of the mist to his right. A flying leathery bug. IT was the size of a gargoyle, heavy leathery wings beating the wet air with a sound like wet canvas snapping in a storm. Talons oustretched as if to try to peel his face off.

  Riven triggered his elbow thrusters and punched outward, driving the lance into the creature’s face.

  “Shoo!” Riven yelled. “Personal space!”

  The creature screeched and spun away into the fog. But two more took its place, the wind from their wings buffeting him, trying to knock him off the wall.

  “I am not food!” Riven shouted, feeling like a man fighting off seagulls, if seagulls weighted two hundred pounds and had a vendetta. Actually, seagulls usually had a vendetta. “Go bother a statue!”

  He resumed his climb, faster now. He needed to get out of the smog. He didn’t to see something else that was this suffocating or angry.

  He ran upwards, the suit keeping him attached his sole lifeline.

  Then, he broke through.

  Riven gasped as he crested the top of the steel skeleton. He pulled himself onto the highest beam, a narrow strip of metal floating above a sea of purple clouds. The sun was shining here, blindingly braight after the gloom below.

  “Made it,” Riven wheezed, glancing down to see shadows flitting through the smog. “King of the castle. Top of the world. Take that, gravity.”

  Then the building shook heavily and Riven was almost thrown off. Riven look up and the triumph of his climb died in his throat.

  Rising from the smog less than three blocks away was a living mountain. A Behemoth. He had seen them in classes and holograms, but scale was a funny thing. You couldn’t appreciate the size of a Behemoth until it was blocking out the sun. it stood on four legs that looked like redwood trees made of stone. Its upper body towered over the skyline.

  Its head, engorged was a cluster of chitin with mandibles the size of a shuttle bus, stared straight ahead. It was marching with the rest of the herd, crushing a six-story apartment complex into dust with a single step just because it was in the way.

  Riven stared at it. He lowered his lance.

  “Sergeant?” Riven said, tapping around his helmet, looking for a comms button. “Sergeant Phillean? I have a question about the difficulty curve.”

  The Beheamoth took another stp. The shockwave nearly rattled Riven’s teeth ouf it skull.

  “This feels unbalanced!” Riven now yelled at the sky, unable to find a button. “That is a walking battleship! I have a stick! Even if Astrix was here I don’t think we could take that down! Do I get an orbital strike? Is that included in the DAIR suit package? Just a small tactical nuke? Please?

  Silence. Just the wind whipping past him, and the echo of the Behemoths footsteps.

  “Okay. No orbital strikes. Budget cuts. I understand.”

  The Behemoth continued its march. I was heading toward the center of the strict, indifferent to the tiny, armored human on the steel beam. Rive realized with a sinking feeling that he wasn’t even worth killing. He was an ant compared to a person.

  “I’m leaving!” Riven yelled at the approaching oversized bug. “I am getting out of your way1”

  Riven spun around, looking for an escape route. But there was nowhere to go. The building ended here. Below him was the smog, filled with Warrior climbing up to pick their teeth with his bones. Jumping was a drop to certain death, which would certainly be better than being eaten. Although that was a grim thought.

  “Activate Jetpack!” Riven yelled.

  [Command not Recognized]

  “Damn.” Riven muttered. “Plan… what plan am I on? Like F?”

  He looked across the sea of clouds. Through a break in the smog, about a mile away, he saw it.

  In the center of a crater, throbbing with a sickly, bio-luminescent light was a massive organic sack pulsing like a heart.

  “Is that a damn Queen?” Riven realized. “I’m on a nest world? No wonder there are so many Resonance forsaken bugs.”

  Riven was tired of being chased. Maybe if he killed that Queen they would get confused, or pass this mission, or the simulation would continue. No matter what, this at least gave him a goal.

  Riven looked down at the smog layer below his feet. The Flyers shadows breaching the surface like sharks and then diving back down.

  Riven watched them. He looked at the thick leather of their wings. Of the weightiness of their main body. He looked back at the Behemoth, which was taking another earth-shaking step toward him, and at the Queen who was a mile away from it all.

  A crazy, suicidal, absolutely terrible idea formed in his head.

  “I wonder,” Riven whispered, gripping his lance tight as he crouched on the edge of the beam. “I wonder if I can steer one of those things.”