Slow motion explosion

  Mack’s imediately went red with an X over it.

  “God fug dammit! Every siher fu time man!”

  “Get off the roof!” Nuke yelled, and her ioved back towards the edge.

  “No! we hose fuckers suppressed till we get there!” Maverick yelled.

  Another pop from the mortar tubes. Gradie looked around frantically, as if there would be some clue on the ground to where the mortars would nd.

  Then, another epiphany. He had no idea where they would nd, but he had a pretty good fug idea where they wouldn’t. He broke out into a jump suit propelled sprint, right at the penthouse skylight.

  He barely had time to snatch the st two grenades off his poud activate them with the heads-up prompt, before the skylight’s jagged gss edge opened up below him, revealing a fully dug-in aer. But, of course, as he had learhe hard way from Philip, every pn is a promise, every position a gamble of odds. They had never expected this shit.

  It was aovie-esque. Just as his feet left the ground, mortars exploded on the roof behind him. He sailed over the skylight and smmed both grenades down past his feet, which felt like fpping mid-flight, and gunfire cracked and echoed below him. Something hit him in the side and turned his graceful flight path into a chaotic half-spin and he dropped toward the far side of the roof sideways, his feet swinging slowly out from under him.

  “Shit.” He hit the ground sideways and half rolled half bounced across the roof as another mortar nded somewhere farther off.

  “What happened?” Nova said, and Gradie fumbled for the words to expin. Luckily, Nuke helped him.

  “His dumb ass ran and jumped over the skylight and dropped grenades—”

  Ohe aforementioned grenades went off i, and their double-sixteenth-note sound was followed immediately by a rger explosion that Gradie noticed, as it echoed across the roof, sounded quite familiar.

  “I set off their fug mortars!” He ughed onto the line.

  “How the fuck did they not have a trophy system—” Nuke squealed

  “Time to push it!” Luke said, and a sed ter another explosion echoed out of the penthouse skylight.

  “On me!” Luke said, and Gradie watched his i dash into the penthouse below. All the other ones, however, were slow to follow.

  “Bro wait, wait!” Nova said.

  “Let the drones—” was all Maverick got out before Luke’s gu off. It was like hearing a friend’s voice, uedly, in a crowded unfamiliar pce. The staccato doubles and triplets, fired while moving so swiftly and precisely that it sounded like multiple shooters in multiple positions. Gradie snapped up to his feet and aimed down into the skylight.

  One guy was g at arenched maegun that looked like a SAW and a Dyson Hammer vacuum had a baby, and Gradie put a burst through his face just as a flurry of other rounds struck him uhe . In under a sed, his head was off.

  “Damn this gun fucks!” Luke said.

  “My kill!” Gradie snapped.

  “My dick!” Luke said and fired again at something Gradie couldn’t see, and stepped out into view in the penthouse, his feet gliding over the broken bodies and hardware of the mortarmen. It was uny. Now that he was taking the shooting serious, he moved in a gameworld with the same fluidity and precision he had in the Hardworlds.

  "Shit! Ones in the elevator!”

  “I got him,” Nova said, and a drone zipped by past Luke.

  “Corpse, get down here. I’m gonna blow those trophy systems on the roof,” Nova said. Gradie hopped down into the penthouse, which looked like an art gallery with a space marine iion, that same extruded pstic spreading weblike across walls and eng strange hardware and fonts of wires. The drones went off on the roof with sounds like transformers exploding in a backyard.

  “Nuke, you good?” Gradie asked, having noticed her i hadn’t moved since he started his run.

  “Yeah, God dammit. Fug mortar asshole dropped me into a closet.”

  There was a crash down the hall, and omped out of what had once been the master bedroom covered in fragments of drywall a.

  “Shit!” Get clear! Get Clear!” Nova jogged in the room waving them all ba no definitive dire while staring at his wrist.

  “What is—”

  “I gotta blow the fug elevator!”

  The group scuffled back behind pilrs and any hardware stations that looked particurly armored, and Gradie, now guided by habit, stepped behind Nuke, just before Sulphyr got there.

  “Give me some space bro.”

  “Get behind me,” Gradie said, not about to cede an inch of space to aer jumping over a mortar team with hand grenades.

  “Man e on just—”

  “Boys stop fighting over me,” Nuke said.

  “He just wants you for your armradie said, and Nuke’s ugh was cut off by a series of explosions at the elevator.

  “Shit. Shit!” Nova sprinted out from behind a pilr and started drilling something into the trol panel. Angel followed close behind him, holding a rger, more sturdier looking version of the mesh shield Gradie had been assigned.

  “What’s he doing?” Maverick barked.

  “The terband weight sensor have been fucked with and it looks like he’s got over half a ton of something in there. I thirying to blow the tower!”

  “Shit!” urtled suddenly, and Gradie ughed.

  “How does that suit do against fall damage?” He whispered at the side of her head and rapped a knuckle on her metal hip, while Sulphyr gred at him.

  “Better than yours!” Nuke squeaked from her co.

  “ you stop him?” Maverick said in a slow booming tone like he was talking to someone far aossibly deaf or ESL.

  “He’s already dead. Popped himself.”

  “Well then you disarm it?”

  “Not with my drone! Shit!”

  “What is it?” Maverick yelled.

  “It’s gotta be a slurry bomb. I hear it mixing right now.”

  “What the fuck—”

  “There’s onating device. Its purely analog. Liquids and gases and shit. Ohe chamber neck bursts it goes off. Maybe thirty seds.”

  “So what—"

  “Get the fuck out! I’m bringing it up!’

  “Bro, I’m up here,” Luke said ftly.

  “If it blows up here the tower will still be stable! Everyohe fuck out!”

  “To where?” Robin yelled, But Nova was already sprinting down the hall.

  “Repel lines!” He yelled.

  “Attached to what?” Robin groaned, but everyone else scrambled after Nova and Angel.

  “Here!” Angel melted something to a metal portion of the gun empt sitting where the master bed used to be and tossed the liside.

  “Ladies first,” Luke said, and waved out the window at Robin.

  “Fug move!” Nuke yelled. She sprinted past Gradie and leaped through the window. While the gss was still h around her and gravity hadn’t yet noticed her presence, she turtled and dropped like a rock. Gradie and Luke almost fell hing while the rest of the squad scrambled after the Twins down the repel lines.

  “Will this suit break my fall?” Gradie asked on the group chat.

  There was no response. Robin desded the rope line in front of Luke and Gradie, and blew a strand of hair out of her visor-less face. Luke looked at Gradie and raised an eyebrow.

  “Think I’m gonna catch that little birdie,” he said out loud.

  That reminded him.

  “Nuke, you ok?” Gradie said on the line.

  “I fell through two floors! It was bad ass! But now Im stuck, ha ha.”

  This time, Gradie raised an eyebrow at Luke who smiled and nodded like they were pnning a heist.

  “Ay, there’s no fug in Gunmaze!” Angel said on their private s. To Gradie, it sounded like a slogan.

  “Is that like a saying?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Angel sneered, his calm humor trasted with Nova’s whispered swears and pleads in the background which bled a subtle ay on the line.

  “Arthel pyers used to use it as a dig. But even there you only fu the home instances—”

  Gradie had hought about being able to restrict Spirits from fug. He had taken that first decration in the Allclub, “here we fuck all around”, as gospel. But if you could limit everything else, from walking to seeing, why not? And what exactly couldn’t a “Priop you from doing?

  Breaking his thoughts, like a storm blown wind chime on a still night, the elevator dinged down the hall.

  “Shit!” Luke ughed a out with the repel line. Gradie looked down and watched him drop the four stories in a few seds, and bounce safely to the garden grounds below. Gradie grabbed the line and gnced out at the skyline. All around the tower, illuminated in his night vision, the war went off like a fireworks show finale, as if in the five minutes since he had climbed to the roof, the firepaged had tripled.

  “The stem just—” was all Nova got out before the world around Gradie got very bright and very loud, and then very fast. The repel li limp in his hands as the explosio him flying.

  He flew with his back to the ground, looking straight up into the air, where stray sers and fighter ships and great dark shadows of capital crafts mingled with smoke and fk explosions. After getting used to the man on a wire motions of the jump suit, being propelled like a bullet was a jolting experience, and in the midst of the adrenaline and noise, a part of him fot the fall couldn’t kill him.

  “Shit!!” He tumbled as he fell, his feet pointing toward the tower just often enough for him to see the rolling bright ball of fire turn mushroom shaped on a pilr of smoke rising up from where the penthouses had once been. The air around the explosion sparkled with gss aal caught in the fire light. It was immensely beautiful, and once again, in the same way the pool had been, unexpinably nostalgic.

  As if to plete the parison, he nded squarely in the ter of one of the rown, fme charred pools spread across the garden, and the world became murky water and broken bits of reed pnts lit oddly in his NVGs.

  “What is this shit, simple syrup?” Luke said on the line, and Gradie noticed his i was redlined and hollow.

  “Did you die?” Gradie asked.

  “Yeah, big support beam flew at me like an old girlfriend and shit. Now I’m climbing out of this goo like some fug Nickelodeon game show. Wait, you survived that shit? What, did you glide down on a piece of drywall?”

  “Landed in water.”

  “Well bud that don’t make sense. Waters like crete at that height. Think the physi this game need some tweaking.”

  “Don’t be jealous. My jump suit kicked on at the st—”

  “Status report, team Maverick,” a voice said on the s.

  “Goathead, this is Maverick. Enemy batants have been removed from the—”

  “Yeah, I fug see that! What the fuck happeo the tower! Did you fet the entire purpose of the op was to secure a fug artillery position for the advance? Did I not tell you six fug times to be prepared fed demolition? You said yuy ro at that shit!”

  “He is! The bomb would have taken out the eower if he hadn’t—”

  “You lost a fourth of it! Do you not uand how height applies to distance when throwing shells?”

  “Well, the alternative was the eoing—”

  “No, the alternative was killing the fug frogmen and defusing any bombs they left behind because that’s what the fuck you told me you could do!”

  “Hey Goathead,” Nova said. “This is QuasarCultist from MiMsquad. We got the tower secure so you keep g about losing fifty feet off of it or you call iillery pieces before the other side makes a move.”

  “Don’t fug tell me—”

  “Oh yeah bro, I’m telling you. I’m also telling you to have my fug payout in my at by end of day or I’m charging i on my fug billed hours. Your CO is D.B., right?”

  “Yeah, he fug is--

  “Ok cool cause I’m seeing him tonight at the house so I’ll just have him do it. Peace.”

  Goathead’s i was removed from the chat.

  “God dammit bro,” Maverick said. “He’s gonna—”

  “Hey man fuck him,” Angel said. “If he gives you shit about this, just e talk to us and we’ll make sure you keep your rank. I’ve never even heard of this dude.”

  “All right man, I appreciate it. You guys staying to escort the ons?”

  “Nah, we gotta go. It’s been fun though. Nice seeing all of you.”

  “Bye Quasar!” Nuke said. “Bye Corpse!”

  The goodbyes overpped each other and Gradie wasn’t able to ask Nuke how he could get in touch with her again, and before he made it to the top of the pool, they were ba the floating ptform.

  “I’ll make sure yall get your tokens,” Nova said. “And I’ll have that mother fucker loading trucks on a moon tomorrow.”

  “Is that bad?” Luke said.

  “We got priority queue now at least,” Angel said. “Howd yall like Soura?”

  “ime I wanna be in a fighter ship,” Luke said. “But shooting that mae gunner felt good. Thanks for helping me live the dream, bro.”

  He spped Gradie on the bad sent him floating across the ptform.

  “What about you, Gradie?” Angel asked.

  “I liked the jump suit. I would also like to fly a ship ime. And do you know if Nuke has a boyfriend?”

  “Bro even if she does, fuck that dude,” Luke said. “Bet he doesn’t fly with grenades like you do. Oh, shit I didn’t get my little birdies line!”

  “What?” Nova ughed.

  “He means Robin,” Angel sighed. Nova cackled and the floating s chimed.

  “ segmeed. Loading… Killcity.”

  Have you ever had a missed e online? ime, we leave Gunmaze behind and che on Sam as she runs from something no one escape. episode, See Sam Run, Chapter 1: Tail Chasing.