“Minor visual artifacts are a natural part of the AR experience. We recommend focusing on gameplay immersion rather than environmental discrepancies.”

  — Vaultline Entertainment User Guidelines, Section 2.4

  Cecilia landed a few meters away with the same impossible grace, her twin swords already drawn, the AR overlay making them gleam with that too-perfect shine of rendered steel.

  She looked at Alice, then at the base in the distance, then back at her sister with an expression that sent both annoyance and curiosity. “Why did we drop here? We always lose when we drop here.”

  Alice’s grin somehow got wider, which I hadn’t thought was possible, and she gestured dramatically at the open plain stretching between us and the distant base with both hands, flames dancing between her fingers in little spirals of rendered fire. “Because, Ceci, my beautiful sword-obsessed sister, this spot is absolutely preem for our new friend!”

  She turned that manic energy toward me, her eyes practically glowing with enthusiasm. “No trees getting in the way, yeah? Clean sightlines, zero obstruction, flawless distance work! He can flex without having to worry about some branch eating his shot!”

  They both turned to look at me.

  The weight of their expectation hit like a physical thing, and I felt sweat break out on my back despite the climate control in the haptic suit, the sensation uncomfortably realistic as the suit’s thermal feedback kicked in to simulate jungle heat.

  “What?” I managed, the word coming out slightly higher than I’d intended.

  Alice bounced on her heels, her robes billowing. “You’re a sniper, right? Two klicks is nothing for a coilgun! You can slot them from here, easy! We’ll handle anything that gets close, but you?” She made a finger-gun gesture at the distant base. “You get to delete anything that moves over there!”

  I stared at her, then at the base, then at the coilgun in my hands that suddenly felt significantly heavier despite being mostly just shaped plastic with an AR overlay.

  “I’ve never—” I started, then stopped, because admitting I’d never used a sniper rifle in my life felt like exactly the wrong thing to say when two corpo academy students were looking at me like I was about to perform magic. “This is a game rifle,” I finished weakly. “I don’t know if the ballistics are even—”

  “That’s the beauty of it!” Alice interrupted, already turning toward the base with a confidence that suggested she’d never once doubted a plan in her entire life. “It’s simulated! Which means it’s probably easier than real! Just point and shoot, Dash! Trust the tech!”

  Thank God she didn’t say trust math, would have to shoot her instead.

  Cecilia gave me a look that was almost sympathetic, but she didn’t disagree with her sister, just adjusted her grip on her swords and started walking toward a gentle rise in the terrain ahead of us with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

  Which I wasn’t, but I followed because what else was I going to do.

  The plain stretched out around us in that perfectly manicured way that only existed in games and corporate advertising.

  Grass that was exactly the right length, terrain that rolled in gentle hills designed for tactical movement, not a piece of actual debris or natural obstruction anywhere in sight.

  The hill wasn’t particularly steep, maybe twenty meters of gradual elevation, but it was enough that I couldn’t see the base clearly until we crested the top and the full scope of what we were walking into materialized in front of us.

  The base sprawled across the far edge of the clearing like a military architect’s wet dream, walls and towers and defensive positions all arranged with clear sight lines across the entire approach.

  Guard towers rose at regular intervals, each one topped with what looked like automated turrets that tracked in slow patterns.

  The main gate was reinforced durasteel or something equally impractical for actual construction, and behind it I could see buildings arranged in a grid that suggested someone had actually thought about logistics and supply lines instead of just slapping structures down randomly.

  And they’d seen us.

  I could tell immediately, even from two kilometers away, because the base’s activity shifted in that unmistakable way that meant alarms were going off and people were scrambling to defensive positions. Movement increased along the walls, figures appearing at guard posts that had been empty seconds before, and from somewhere inside the compound I heard the whine of engines spinning up.

  “Drones.”

  I raised the coilgun, settling the stock against my shoulder with movements that felt clumsy despite the haptic suit’s attempt to make everything feel natural, and peered through the scope.

  The view snapped into focus with a clarity that made my breath catch, this wasn’t AR, but rendered on display, and magnification so crisp I could see individual rivets on the guard tower’s plating, could watch personnel moving through the compound with weapons that crackled with systematic energy.

  And the drones—

  They were launching now, rising from internal bays like angry insects, maybe a dozen of them spreading out in a search pattern that would cover the entire plain in minutes. Sleek things, all angular plating and visible weapon mounts, probably with networked AI controlling their flight paths.

  The activity at the base itself had intensified to organized chaos.

  Soldiers were taking positions along the walls, automated defenses tracking toward our general direction, the entire compound shifting into combat readiness.

  Alice’s laughter cut through my focus, and I lowered the scope just enough to see her wreathed in flames that danced higher now, her entire form practically vibrating with anticipation.

  “Don’t worry about the drones!” she shouted, her voice carrying that manic edge that hinted she was having the time of her life. “I’ll draw them to me, focus on shooting, and we’ll burn anything that gets close! You just slot every glitched gonk you see moving in that base, yeah? Make it rain, Dash! Paint the whole corp installation red!”

  I stared at her, then at Cecilia, who just nodded with a grin, which was more terrifying than her sister’s chaos, and then back at the base where targets were multiplying by the second.

  The coilgun felt wrong in my hands, the weight distribution different from my rifle, the scope’s reticle unfamiliar, the trigger pull probably calibrated to completely different specs, and I was supposed to just start shooting at targets two kilometers away like I did this every day.

  Right.

  I dropped to the ground, feeling the grass compress beneath me with that slightly too-perfect texture of simulated vegetation, and settled into a prone position that I’d seen in holos but never actually practiced because sniping had never been relevant to my life of shooting bugs in tunnels at ten meters.

  The coilgun’s barrel extended in front of me, and I adjusted my grip, trying to find something that felt stable, that felt right, the haptic suit conveying every bit through sensors I could feel pressing against my skin.

  Through the scope, the base waited, swarming with activity, targets presenting themselves with the obliging regularity of NPCs following their combat programming.

  I took a breath, feeling it fill my lungs with air that tasted faintly of grass, but also wrong; they probably skipped filter maintenance.

  No, focus!

  I put my finger on the trigger. The scope’s reticle settled on a figure moving along the base’s outer wall, and I squeezed.

  The coilgun kicked against my shoulder with a force that the haptic suit translated into a sharp pulse of feedback, not quite painful but insistent enough to remind me this wasn’t a toy, and through the scope I watched the projectile streak toward the target in a line of distorted air that the AR system rendered as a faint blue trail.

  Miss.

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  The round hit the wall maybe half a meter to the left of where I’d aimed, punching through the reinforced plating with a shower of rendered sparks that looked impressive but didn’t actually hit anything important.

  “Shit,” I muttered, adjusting my aim, trying to account for whatever ballistics model the game was using because apparently even simulated electromagnetically-accelerated projectiles had travel time and drop that I needed to compensate for.

  I tracked another target; this one was moving across an open section between two buildings, and fired again.

  Closer.

  The round passed maybe twenty centimeters over his head, close enough that the NPC actually ducked, their combat AI recognizing the near-miss and responded with an evasive movement that looked disturbingly organic.

  “Third shot,” I whispered, centering the reticle on a soldier who’d stopped to take a firing position behind a barrier.

  Account for distance, account for movement, account for the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and was learning an entirely new weapon system.

  I squeezed the trigger.

  Hit.

  The soldier’s head snapped back, their body crumpling with a ragdoll physics that games had perfected decades ago, and a fake game-like notification flashed in my peripheral vision.

  [Kill! Midorikawa is proud!]

  “PREEM!” Alice’s voice crackled through whatever communication system the game had automatically established between us, but I could still also hear her nearby. Ugh, weird. “See? You’re a natural! Keep it up!”

  I wasn’t a natural; I was just getting lucky with statistical probability after enough attempts, but I didn’t argue because there were more targets presenting themselves and arguing would waste time.

  Movement near the vehicle bay caught my attention, a group of soldiers sprinting toward what looked like an armored transport, their formation tight as they moved with a clear goal toward the vehicle bay.

  I tracked the lead runner, adjusted for distance and movement, and fired.

  Hit.

  The soldier went down, and the others scattered immediately, their AI recognizing they were under sniper fire and responding with appropriate panic. I fired again, catching one as they tried to reach cover, then a third as they hesitated between continuing toward the vehicle and finding shelter.

  [Kill! Midorikawa is proud!]

  [Kill! Midorikawa is proud!]

  The remaining soldiers made it to the armored car, scrambled inside as they knew they were exposed, and I tracked the vehicle as it started moving, its engine roaring to life.

  I fired at the driver’s viewport.

  The round sparked off the armored plating, leaving a scratch that looked cosmetic at best, and the vehicle kept coming, accelerating across the open ground toward our position with the inexorable momentum of several tons of military hardware.

  “Uh,” I said. “The car’s armored. I can’t—”

  “We’ve got it!” Cecilia’s voice cut in. “Just keep them off us while we get close. Once we’re in melee range, reposition and find another angle.”

  They were close, and the AR tried their best to render them far away, but it made my head hurt.

  Thankfully, through the scope I could see them where the game wanted them to be, Alice and Cecilia moving across the plain with a speed that looked wrong for human locomotion, closing the distance to the base faster than should be possible without vehicles or jetpacks.

  Alice’s flames had intensified, creating a wake of fire behind her that scorched the simulated grass, while Cecilia moved like a shadow, her swords already in position for whatever violence she was planning.

  I fired at another soldier on the walls, then another, each shot coming easier now as I internalized the weapon’s rhythm, the way the scope tracked, the amount of lead I needed to give moving targets.

  Something shrieked through the air.

  I thought it was a bullet at first, but nope, or even a rocket, it was something that screamed with a magical energy that made my teeth ache even through the simulation.

  I caught a glimpse of it through my peripheral vision, a projectile that glowed with geometric patterns, force magic or combat spell wrapped around an explosive core, and it was heading directly for me.

  I rolled.

  Purely on instinct, no thought involved, just my body moving before my brain could catch up and tell me that rolling away from explosions was something people did in action holos, not something that actually worked.

  DAWNG!

  The spell-rocket hit where I’d been lying with a detonation that picked me up and threw, the haptic suit going absolutely insane trying to convey the physics of being inside a blast radius.

  Sound crushed against my ears, pressure slammed into my chest, and the world spun in a nauseating tumble before I hit the ground hard enough that the suit’s impact feedback made my whole body itch.

  The crater where I’d been prone was maybe three meters across, grass and dirt thrown in every direction, the terrain permanently scarred by whatever unholy combination of magic and explosives the game’s weapon designers had cooked up.

  I scrambled to my feet, or tried to, my movements clumsy and disoriented as I checked the coilgun to make sure it hadn’t been damaged in the explosion, and yeah, somehow the weapon was still intact and functional.

  I needed to move, needed to find another position before they bracketed this with a second shot, and I started running toward a different hill maybe fifty meters away, my boots pounding against simulated ground.

  Except I reached it in what felt like five seconds.

  I skidded to a stop, breathing hard not from exertion but from sheer confusion, because fifty meters should have taken longer than that, should have left me winded and struggling, but I felt fine, energized even, like I’d barely jogged instead of sprinted.

  I looked back at where I’d started, trying to make sense of the distance, and realized I’d covered ground that should have been impossible in that timeframe.

  “What the—” The sound escaped before I could stop it, my brain refusing to process what my body had just accomplished.

  Cecilia’s giggle came through the comm, genuinely amused. “You’re just now noticing?”

  “Check your abilities!” Alice added, her voice carrying that gleeful energy as if she’d been waiting for me to figure this out. “Should be something like... I dunno, a band on your hand? Or a menu? Each char does it differently!”

  I looked down at my hand, and sure enough, there was a faint shimmer around my wrist that I’d completely ignored. I focused on it, and a window materialized in my vision with that smooth AR transition.

  [OPERATIVE ABILITIES - ACTIVE]

  [Unlimited Ammunition]

  [Enhanced Speed]

  [Steady Aim]

  [Invisibility]

  [Anti-Detection]

  [LOCKED IN NORMAL MODE]

  [LOCKED IN NORMAL MODE]

  [LOCKED IN NORMAL MODE]

  I stared at the list, my brain trying to reconcile game mechanics with anything resembling reality, and failing completely because apparently I was playing as some kind of black ops character instead of just a guy with a gun.

  “Uhhh...” I reached out and touched [Invisibility], half-expecting nothing to happen because this was already too much for AR systems.

  The world shimmered.

  Just a subtle distortion that rippled across my body like heat haze, and when I looked down at myself, I could barely see my own hands. The effect wasn’t as good as MIRAGE, but it was close enough that I’d be hard to spot unless someone was looking directly at me.

  Hopefully the NPCs were programmed to be appropriately blind.

  I glanced at the girls, who were like six meters away, and shook my head, trying to push away distracting thoughts. I dropped prone again, settling the coilgun against my shoulder, and peered through the scope toward where Alice and Cecilia were still charging across the plain with all the aggro in the world focused entirely on them.

  Unlimited ammunition. Fantasy that made every miner who’d ever counted rounds in a bug tunnel weep with envy.

  I could get used to this.

  The drones had shifted formation, circling above the twins like predatory birds, their weapons tracking.

  Ground forces poured out of the base in squads, taking firing positions, establishing overlapping fields of fire designed to catch the approaching targets in a killbox that looked lethal.

  And at the center of it all, Alice ran wreathed in flames with a happy giggle.

  I settled the reticle on the nearest drone, one of the sleek angular things circling above Alice and Cecilia with its weapons tracking their movement, squeezed the trigger, and felt something that might have been a smile tug at my lips.

  The coilgun kicked, the round streaking through the air with that now-familiar blue trail, and the drone exploded in a shower of sparks and twisted metal that rained down across the plain.

  And the notifications kept flashing with each hit, Midorikawa’s automated approval system racking up kills like a corporate scorecard.

  “YES!” Alice’s voice practically screamed, pure undiluted joy flooding out. “DASH! YOU BEAUTIFUL SNIPER! I HATE THOSE FLYING GONKS! THEY ALWAYS STAY OUT OF REACH!”

  I tracked the next drone, leading it slightly as it banked to adjust its attack vector, and fired again.

  Another explosion, another cascade of debris.

  The remaining drones scattered, their formation breaking as their AI recognized they were being picked off. They tried their best, flying in evasive patterns, proving harder to track, but it didn’t matter because I had unlimited ammunition and they were flying against an empty sky.

  I fired again and again, each shot coming easier as the rhythm settled into my muscle memory, as the coilgun stopped feeling foreign.

  Drone after drone fell, their wreckage littering the ground below, and through the scope I could see Alice laughing, actually jumping with excitement as she ran, flames dancing higher around her hands like she was celebrating each kill personally.

  “Keep it up!” Cecilia’s voice came through, still calm despite the chaos. “We’re almost in range!”

  I glanced away from the scope for just a moment, trying to gauge how far they’d actually gotten, and my brain stuttered trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

  They looked like they were still a kilometer away.

  Maybe more, small figures in the distance, the base looming behind them, all that open ground between us creating the impression of vast separation.

  I could tell now that I was looking for it, could see the way the game was rendering distance incorrectly, creating the illusion of separation while the actual geometry put them close enough that I could’ve thrown a pebble at them.

  The visual trickery was impressive, probably designed to make the battlefield feel larger and more epic than it actually was, but the effect was deeply unsettling.

  Back to the scope.

  The armored car that had been accelerating toward them reached striking distance, its turret rotating to bring weapons to bear on targets that were suddenly right there instead of comfortably far away.

  Alice didn’t slow down.

  She raised both hands, flames coalescing around her fingers with an intensity that made the air shimmer, and the fire that erupted from her palms wasn’t the playful dancing flames she’d been throwing around earlier.

  This was an inferno.

  The column of heat and light slammed into the armored car, and I watched through the scope as the metal glowed, then warped, the entire vehicle’s armor plating liquefying.

  The occupants didn’t even have time to scream before the whole thing ceased to exist, consumed so completely that all that remained was scorched earth and super-heated air rippling in waves that distorted my view.

  I flinched despite knowing it was rendered and a kilometer away, my finger slipping off the trigger as my brain tried to process the sheer destructive power I’d just witnessed.

  Alice’s laughter echoed through the simulated comm. “We’re cooking!”

  “Dash, the gate! Now?! They’re opening the—” Cecilia yelled.

  The base’s main gate split apart with a grinding mechanical roar, and something emerged from the darkness beyond.

  Something that made the armored car look like a toy.

  A boss.

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY Invaders

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