The forest seemed to swallow the team. The trees were massive and strange. They were almost as tall as redwoods back home, but the trunks looked like they were made up of multiple smaller trunks that twisted around each other as they climbed into the canopy far above. Thick, feathery vines hung from vast vertical branches. Below, on the ground around them, lay fallen trees, half hidden in a dense layer of dark ferns and tall bushes covered in flowers in pinks and greens.

  Jay whistled. “Forest Primeval. I always wanted to visit a jungle one day. I don’t think this is far off.”

  The path twisted through the little valleys created by the massive tree trunks that seemed to pull up the forest floor around them as they grew. Light filtered down in fractured moving bands, like a bright kaleidoscope scrolling across the dense underbrush. The ground dipped and rose unpredictably beneath a carpet of fallen needles and damp leaves. It was easy to move quietly but the walk was difficult and punished inattention.

  Alex felt every trip and misstep like a new kick in his ribs.

  It wasn’t a sharp pain. Just a deep, stubborn ache that flared whenever he twisted too fast or breathed too hard. The night before had left its mark. Connor had worked his side, hitting him in the same area several times. Alex started gritting his teeth as he thought about Connor again but turned his attention to his new focus ring instead. After a few moments in deep breath, the mana motes he was expecting brightened up the forest around him, making the forest look more…. Well, magical. The mana didn’t just pop into existence, it was always there. He could feel it around him all the time now—whether that was the ring, or his own growth he wasn’t sure.

  He adjusted his stride and tried to step over more of the loose rocks and logs strewn across the path, trying to not aggravate his ribs.

  Alex watched his HUD, but it remained quiet. No markers. No guiding arrow. Just a faint, translucent minimap hovering at the edge of his vision, showing where they had come from, but not where they were going. It seemed to map the route as they walked. He wondered about that. Surely a corporate team had come out here to plant the flag. But their maps weren’t being shared in real time. Was that by design or oversight?

  “I think this forest goes on forever.” Mel didn’t sound upset by that, just curious.

  She was pretty much right though. Alex had talked to some of the guards in the cafeteria and according to them there was hundreds of kilometers of wilderness to the west and even more to the north. All the population centers were closer to the sea, far to the south.

  He wondered how many forests like this were left back on Earth. Places where they could walk for weeks on end and never encounter another human; just trees, water, animals, and whatever else lived out here. It was incredibly peaceful and he decided he was going to have to come back out here and explore as soon as he had some free time.

  They had been walking for over an hour and the scenery hadn’t changed much. Sometimes it was flatter, sometimes they had to scramble through deep valleys or up huge hills. They came across cliffs and several streams and skirted around a wide swampy area when the mosquitos got too thick. He wondered if mosquitos existed in every world.

  Somewhere in the vast green sprawl was the flag they were supposed to find. They had discussed it and had to bet that it would be at least close to the path eventually. Otherwise they could wander these woods for a month before they found it… if they ever did. Once they got close enough to the location their HUDS were supposed to light up with a soft ping showing them the general area of the flag.

  They didn’t know how close they had to be to activate it, but Alex assumed the two classes were walking along relatively parallel paths and the flag would ping from both sides. But, maybe not. Maybe they were supposed to show a little initiative and not just trudge down the path as a group.

  Alex slowed and called out to everyone. They were spread out along the path, everyone lost in their own thoughts. Alex waited for them to turn and come back to him.

  “Alright,” he said quietly. “New plan. I want to spread out so we can cover more ground. I would hate to walk past it and find out later that it doesn’t ping from the path.” He waited for a moment for everyone to consider this. When there were no objections he continued, “Rae, Danny, head out a couple hundred meters on either side of the path and parallel us. The minimaps seem to cover a little over one hundred meters, so we want you guys just outside that range.”

  Alex looked around at everyone and dropped his voice. “It’s been pretty quiet so far, but we know the company has something for us out here, so I want check-ins every five minutes.”

  Ravenna gave a brief nod and melted sideways into the trees, her cloak flickering once before blending in with the dark underbrush. Danny followed more cautiously, bow in hand, eyes scanning the canopy above as much as the undergrowth ahead.

  “Jay, you can cover ground a little faster, so you take forward,” Alex said. “If you catch the flag ping just send us a message and we’ll all pull into you asap.”

  Jay smiled and tapped two fingers to his brow in a mock salute. He took off at an easy jog. Marcus, who had been observing off to one side, fell in beside him with practiced efficiency.

  That left Alex with Sarah, and Mel. And Hiro observing.

  They moved forward at a steady pace, boots crunching softly over pinecones and twigs. Alex watched his minimap until the blips of his teammates walked off the edge of the displayed area. Fortunately, he saw that they stayed as little green dots on the very edge of the map, showing him exactly what direction they were.

  “Your ribs?”

  Alex glanced up and saw Hiro watching him with a neutral expression. His eyes were clearly sharp.

  “They're okay,” Alex said.

  Hiro just raised an eyebrow and Alex felt a little dumb trying to hide something that Hiro had obviously seen clearly.

  He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, then adjusted his grip on his staff. “It’ll be fine. Just bruised.”

  Hiro nodded once, satisfied, then after a few steps added, “You wanted to ask me something.”

  Alex blinked.

  “You keep glancing over at me,” Hiro said. “I just assumed you were thinking about something you wanted to ask.”

  Alex frowned. He was going to have to remember just how observant Hiro was. “Connor said something last night. During the fight.” He glanced over at Hiro, wondering if he needed to explain that, but he just nodded in response. “He asked me ‘What have you been telling your ANIP to upgrade.’ What did he mean by that? The ANIP is always upgrading our system isn’t it?”

  Hiro’s brow creased slightly. “Ah. It’s not something they usually show you until near the end of the training period, but if you know where to find it in the menus, you can activate a more manual control over the upgrade, or reinforcing process.” Hiro laughed suddenly and said, “Don’t say ‘upgrading’ in front of Reach. He hates that term.”

  Alex hesitated. “There’s a lot of menus.”

  Hiro just smiled as they walked around the next bend in silence, then he continued. “By default, I think the ANIP handles our development on its own. That’s where they start you. It keeps an eye on your body and upgrades everything together, in a somewhat balanced way. It puts a little more effort into amplifying work you do yourself, weight training or cardio for instance.”

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  “I knew about that part…” Alex said, browsing through the dozens of menus in his HUD while they walked.

  “Yes,” Hiro agreed. “General optimization.”

  “And the alternative?”

  “You can override priority weighting,” Hiro said. “Direct it. Someone must have shown Connor how to do it already.”

  Alex slowed half a step. “Direct it how?”

  “By stat focus,” Hiro said simply. “Strength. Dexterity. Constitution. Endurance. Sensory acuity. Things like that. You tell the ANIP what to favor, and it applies continuous pressure in that direction.”

  Sarah snorted softly. “Pressure’s one word for it.”

  Alex glanced at her. “You’ve done this.”

  She shrugged. “Strength focus. Since day one. Makes the workouts hurt more, but the gains stack faster.”

  Mel nodded. “Constitution for me.”

  Alex frowned. “Why constitution?”

  Mel smiled thinly. “Because, I want to stay standing when things go wrong.”

  That made sense. Mel was the smallest of them. “Wait, who told you about this?”

  “Elira” they both said together.

  Hiro told him where to find the option in his HUD menus and Alex pulled his attention inward, opening the layered menus he usually ignored. Sure enough, there it was. System Optimization Parameters. He wondered what other useful features were buried in the menus. He was going to have to sit down and spend some time there.

  For now, he skimmed through the options as they walked.

  “So if you set a focus,” he said, “the ANIP still builds everything else right? It’s not a ‘one or the other’ type setting.”

  “Yeah,” Hiro said. “It will focus more of its effort on your choice, but everything else will still get some attention.”

  “What did you choose?” As soon as he asked he knew it was a dumb question. Hiro was a monk.

  “Dexterity,” Hiro said.

  Alex’s gaze lingered on the options.

  >> Strength.

  >> Constitution.

  >> Endurance.

  >> Dexterity.

  If he were rolling a DnD character, he might have focused on Constitution. But this was real life, as crazy as that sounded, and he felt his durability and healing were already pretty good. So, Endurance or Reaction times. He already had fast hand reflexes, but his feet had never kept up. He liked the idea of being able to dodge better.

  That was the one.

  He selected Dexterity.

  A confirmation pulse rippled through his HUD, subtle but unmistakable. His body responded almost immediately, but he couldn’t explain how. Just a feeling like something had changed.

  “Huh,” Alex murmured.

  Jay gave them a soft update from up ahead. The voice sounded softly in his ear. “No movement ahead. Just trees and more trees. And no sign of the flag yet.”

  “Copy,” Alex said. “Maintain distance for now.” He shook his head. He was getting used to this new life, but sometimes it just struck him as really odd. He was dressed up in villager linens, carrying ordinance and talking on comms like some kind of special military unit.

  Another fifteen minutes passed. Then another. The forest remained stubbornly quiet.

  Alex was almost beginning to relax, just enjoying the forest around him, when Danny’s HUD flared red.

  >> MAYDAY – CONTACT – NEED ASSISTANCE

  “Danny!” Alex snapped. “Location?” Dumb! He didn’t need to ask that. “What’s your status? What’s attacking?” There was no answer.

  Alex highlighted Danny’s HUD marker on the edge of the minimap. A light arrow overlaid across the world in front of him.

  “Everyone to Danny!” Alex barked. They broke into a run.

  The forest blurred as they pushed through brush and over fallen logs, breath puffing despite all their recent training. Alex wondered how much faster they were actually running now but quickly pushed the thought aside at the pull in his ribs. He focused instead on the map

  They burst into a small clearing just in time to see Danny standing over something large and many-legged twitching on the ground. He was pulling arrows out of its face.

  Alex skidded to a halt.

  The millipede was massive—nearly four feet long, its segmented body plated in overlapping armor panels that ranged from deep brown to glossy black. Each segment bore a pair of spindly legs that still twitched reflexively. Its head was blunt and ugly, dominated by a pair of thick mandibles that clicked weakly as it tried, and failed, to move.

  “I—uh,” Danny said. “I stepped on it.”

  Mel burst out laughing. “You stepped on that?”

  “It was under the leaves!” Danny protested.

  Alex approached cautiously, studying the creature. He could see its mana signature slowly dimming, dissipating back into the environment like heat off cooling metal.

  “You okay?” Alex asked.

  Danny nodded. “Yeah. That new charm the Wylde bunch gave me helped. Kept me from panicking.”

  Alex nodded and turned. “Alright. Regroup I guess. We—”

  Rae came running into the small clearing and skidded to a halt when she saw them all standing around. Then she saw the millipede. “Holy crap! What is that thing? Never mind, I need to sit.”

  Rae must be a lot faster than Alex realized if she was here already. She even beat Jay despite being further away. Breathing heavily, she walked over and sat on one of the large rotting logs in the clearing but before she could even shift to get more comfortable the ground around her exploded upwards.

  Wood splintered as a rotten log burst apart, fragments flying as something long and armored surged up from beneath it. Then another. And another. She screamed in surprise and covered her head as enormous brown and black bodies twisted and curled in the air around her.

  Incredibly, the millepedes completely ignored Rae and moved towards the rest of the group.

  “Shit - CONTACT!” Alex shouted.

  ***

  By the time you’ve set up a dozen challenge zones, you stop thinking of them as events you need to set up and start thinking of them as environments that misbehave on schedule.

  The Forest Challenge is the cleanest one we’ve run in a long time. Not safest necessarily, but the cleanest. It’s a wide area, with clear sightlines from above the canopy. We know exactly what’s in this portion of the forest and how to deal with it if something goes sideways and the only thing they’re really going to need to deal with is a handful of boars.

  Worst case scenario here? A trainee gets lost in the forest and they’re too dumb to follow the HUD minimap back the way they came from.

  That was not true in the mushroom caverns challenge.

  Season Four taught us a lot about the sentient fungal networks on Earth-3 and absolutely nothing about restraint. We thought we were dealing with territorial organisms. Turned out they were defensive ecosystems with a shared pain response. Every team that burned spores or cut down mushroom-men only made the next chamber angrier. By the time they fought their way to the last chamber we needed to move in with flamethrowers to clear a path back out for them.

  The cathedral ruins challenge was worse, although in a different way. The old stone hid pitfalls and traps we just couldn’t anticipate and was populated by a goblin culture that understood ambush as an art form. We spent weeks seeding the approach paths, tearing down kill corridors, and culling the goblin population. Unfortunately, by the time the challenge came around, the Goblins brought in reinforcements from somewhere and managed to outflank us twice before we broke them. I still wear the same helmet, covered in dents, as a reminder.

  Scouting locations is ninety percent walking and ten percent arguing with analysts who only want what looks good on camera. So we have to compromise. We find a place that almost works, then shave off the parts that will get someone killed if they aren’t careful and hope that the trainees are going to perform at the necessary level.

  The goal has never been fairness. It’s about stress. Decision-making under pressure. Watching who freezes, who improvises, and who pretends they’re fine when they’re not. But our job is to try and set up the course to add the right level of stress… without killing someone.

  After twelve runs, I can tell you this little tidbit with confidence: The ops team has to step in and protect the trainees every single time. They’re just not ready for full contact encounters at this stage, despite what SCRY wants to think. Reach knows it. We know it.

  Personal Journal

  Field Agent S. Rios, Delta-7