The Reborn Soldier's Revenge

The Man They Wanted Dead

[HUNT BEGINS NOW.]

For one second, the battlefield disappeared. The screaming, the gunfire, the mechanical creatures crawling out of the desert, none of it mattered next to one sentence. Aegis had officially declared him the first player to be eliminated. Not the first target. Not the most dangerous player. The first to be eliminated.

Ethan looked up. Across the desert, thousands of red lights stared back, machines surrounding them, some four legged, some crawling like insects, a few unsettlingly close to human. Every weapon among them pointed at Ethan alone.

"Move!" Marcus shouted, and Ethan snapped back into his body as a creature leaped from the sand.

BANG! It exploded in midair. A second one came from behind, and Diana screamed his name a half second before it would have mattered, its claws already rising, but Gideon's shot took its head off first.

"You're welcome," Gideon grinned.

"Keep shooting," Ethan said.

"That's your way of saying thank you?"

"Yes."

"You're going to be a terrible leader," Gideon said, shaking his head.

"I don't plan on being one."

"Then why is everyone following you?"

Ethan didn't answer, because he didn't know. He hadn't asked any of them to follow him here. But they had, and now they were all targets because of it.

"Marcus. Ammunition?"

"Not enough."

"How long can we hold them?"

"Five minutes."

The fortress entrance sat exposed behind them, walls unfinished, defenses dead. If the swarm reached it first, they were finished before they'd even started.

"Toby!" The hacker looked up from behind a half buried support beam. "Get inside. Turn it on."

"Alone? While those things are attacking?"

"Yes."

"You really don't know how to motivate people." Toby's expression sobered anyway, the joke draining out of his face fast. "If it doesn't activate, we all die?"

"Understood." He turned, then stopped, glancing back over his shoulder. "If I die, I'm haunting you."

"Get moving."

Toby ran. Marcus glanced at Ethan. "You have a plan?"

"No. But I know how to make one." He pointed toward Dominic. "You're our wall. Get behind that rock."

Dominic looked almost offended. "That's your reason? I'm the biggest person here?"

"Yes."

He grinned and planted his shield in the sand. "Come on, you ugly bastards!"

The first wave slammed into him. CLANG. He held. Ethan, Marcus, and Gideon fired together while Diana hung back, useless with a weapon and knowing it, until her hands started glowing faintly, gold light spreading across Dominic's wounds and closing them before anyone understood what was happening.

"What the hell?" Dominic said, staring at his own arm, the gash across his forearm knitting shut like it had never happened.

"Check your system," Ethan told her, not taking his eyes off the machines still coming. "Your abilities."

Diana's face changed as she read her own status, disbelief chasing surprise across it. "I have... a healing skill. I don't know how to use it."

"Try."

The wave of gold energy that followed swept the whole group, wounds knitting closed, strength returning. Diana wasn't just a doctor. She was a system healer, and she hadn't known it until this exact moment.

But the machines kept coming. Ethan's ammunition dropped fast, 21 percent, then 17, and a huge creature charged him just as his weapon clicked empty. He froze, certain for a half second this was it, and then it exploded from behind him.

Rebecca stood there, weapon smoking. "You're welcome."

"Where did you get that?"

"It's mine."

"That's not what I asked."

Her eyes narrowed. "Later."

"Now." Ethan recognized the technology now that he had time to look, Aegis hardware that shouldn't have existed until Phase Three of the war he remembered, sleek and dark and nothing like the standard issue weapons the rest of them carried. Rebecca had one on day one, six months into a rebirth that shouldn't have given her access to anything like it, which meant somebody had handed it to her, and Ethan intended to find out who.

"Who are you," he asked.

"You think you're the only person who remembers how this ends?" she said, cold now, all pretense gone. "I remember more than you." Then she walked away, leaving the question hanging unanswered in the smoke.

"Base!" Marcus shouted. The fortress entrance had opened, Toby standing inside it. "IT'S ON!"

They fell back together, Dominic covering the rear, Gideon fighting beside him, Diana healing anyone who needed it on the way. The moment Ethan crossed the threshold, the massive door slammed shut behind them, machines crashing against it in a rhythm that shook the whole structure.

Inside was dark, half finished, wires hanging loose from a ceiling nobody had gotten around to closing up, construction equipment scattered everywhere like the workers had simply walked off the job mid shift. No food. No weapons. No comfort of any kind, just bare concrete and the smell of fresh cement still curing in the walls.

"Where are the supplies," Ethan asked.

"Not here," Toby said. "You said the fortress wasn't finished."

Gideon looked around at the bare concrete. "This is your great fortress?"

Ethan checked the system instead of answering.

[BASE STATUS.] [POWER: 37%.] [WATER: 12%.] [FOOD: 0%.] [WEAPONS: 3%.] [DEFENSE SYSTEM: OFFLINE.]

Trapped underground, no food, almost no water, the enemy still outside the door.

"Secret button that fixes everything?" Gideon asked.

"No."

"Of course not."

Ethan turned to Toby. "Can you activate the defenses?"

"I'll try."

"Try harder."

"You're really bad at encouragement."

While Toby worked, a small red light caught Ethan's eye, blinking on the far wall. He crossed to it and touched the panel, and a holographic screen bloomed to life.

[WELCOME BACK, ETHAN VANCE.] [BASE OWNER: ETHAN VANCE.] [PRIMARY USER CONFIRMED.] [PREVIOUS OWNER: CLASSIFIED.]

"Previous owner?" Someone had held this place before him, and the screen wouldn't say who.

[ACCESS DENIED.]

Then: [WARNING.] [UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT.]

"Someone is inside," Ethan said, and Marcus's weapon came up instantly. Footsteps sounded behind them, a shadow shifting in the dark.

"Come out!" Gideon shouted. Nothing moved.

"You have three seconds," Ethan said. One. Two. Three.

A woman stepped into the light, hands raised, uniform torn, blood streaked across her face, terror written into every line of her body. Chloe.

Nobody spoke. His wife, the woman who had stolen his armor and walked away while he died, standing inside a fortress nobody was supposed to be able to find, in a life she wasn't even supposed to know existed yet.

"How did you get here," Ethan said.

"I don't know."

"Who told you where my base was?"

"I don't know!"

"You're lying."

"I followed the signal," she said finally. "The one you sent."

"I never sent you anything."

Her face went white. "Then who did?"

The fortress shook as the swarm outside hit the doors again. Then her system flared to life, a red symbol blooming above her head.

[PLAYER DETECTED.] [PLAYER: CHLOE STERLING.] [STATUS: INFECTED.]

"What?" she said, confused, and then Ethan's own system confirmed the worst of it.

[WARNING.] [A FOREIGN SYSTEM HAS BEEN INSTALLED IN PLAYER CHLOE STERLING.]

"Chloe. Don't move." She froze, and then her eyes changed, fear draining out of them, replaced by something empty. She smiled, and it wasn't her smile.

A voice came through the speakers overhead. Dr. Thorne.

"Excellent. Subject Ethan Vance has successfully established a shelter, and gathered six additional reborn individuals."

"How does she know that," Marcus said.

"However," Thorne continued, and the lights flared red, every interior door slamming shut at once. "Your fortress has been compromised."

Chloe raised her head, still smiling with a mouth that wasn't hers anymore. "Hello, Ethan."

That voice wasn't Chloe's at all. Her body twisted, eyes going fully black, and Diana screamed as Gideon leveled his weapon at her.

"Julian says hello, Ethan."

His heart stopped. Julian was dead. He'd watched the missile take him, watched him wear the stolen armor into a grave. He couldn't be speaking through his wife's mouth.

"That's impossible," Ethan said, and the lights went out entirely, plunging the fortress into a darkness so complete he could no longer tell where the walls were.

A message glowed alone in the black, the only light left in the room.

[NEW MISSION.] [KILL THE INFILTRATOR.] [WARNING.] [THE INFILTRATOR IS SOMEONE YOU LOVE.]

Ethan stood frozen, weapon still raised toward a voice he couldn't see anymore, toward a wife who might not be entirely his wife anymore either.

Chloe's voice drifted through the black, closer now than it had been a moment ago. "Choose carefully, Ethan."

Then the fortress doors ground open again, the enemy army pouring back in over the sound of Diana's ragged breathing and Gideon cursing somewhere to his left, and somewhere in the dark, closer still, Chloe laughed.