The captain and assist captain make the raid siren call at exactly 3 am. The squad is ready to drill run and obstacle cross by half past.
The squad by number preform as expected to their numerical value, the worst unable to clear the first wall climb and the best jumping it without a second hesitancy. Even the worst number is proud, as she knows her failure teaches human players to be better.
She never experienced different and was never expected different. Nor is she lazy, she does as she is program and she is program to be clumsy. She is also will always be up lifted by the others of the squad. They are to assist their worst to make the average best. As per always, she is last to finish and is tasked the laundry, cleaning the facilities and polish boot duty. She the ai that teaches players domestic skill and the importance of these up keeps.
At the afternoon peak either before or after eating lunch, the world has a predetermined mission to be completed each day.
None of them track if the same missions as always. None keep record of their history of finishing the task before. The mission is always cleared regardless. If it's better then best, the camp has a upgrade. If it worse, they loose a camp upgrade. Usually it's one more or less facility. It's never a big deal as those are human player use only.
They have equipment inspections after mission, graded a new numerical value based on this. The end the final meal with some free time, if earned by their value.
Watch duty over night for any surprise raids is assigned and sleep shifts are allocated. The worse rank at the bottom always has the least amount of sleep, never has enough time to look after her own equipment and has program traits that slow down her chores.
But she's not a human, and doesn't have a reason to question her programming. Backwardly, she exactly as she needs to be and is satisfied that her role is perfect. Lack of players doesn't matter, as even if they are here. She will still be the same.
Every five missions tends to have a large event to follow. The army commander hands out medals and or a secert mission is handed out. Those give this mission either never come back or are changed value entirely. Those that came back from this tend to replace the captain position, putting last captain into the assistant position. The previous assistant will be the new top officer. The top officer is cycled through the daily numerical value change with the rest of the squad. By the fifth mission, it is normal the same top officers, or a new one who bested that month, be given the secret mission to take captain position to chance again. No one fussed the small details, they didn't complete against each other. They are stuck stagnant in no changes and no compromise.
This was the standard. The leader board unchanged and unable to be the player score bests. The online lobby has long lost its fluster. Hardly any need for this insulation to be used for any major development. It's been the only stable area for the least amount of glitches and bugs. Nothing changes. No one comes back the same or at all.
But self-awareness comes with some unsatisfactory feelings. The next lowest position from bottom has been reprimand many times for voicing his will to seek things outside the camp. He has always been unsuccessful in leaving the camp secretly. He pushed to break into a better numerical value but was always held down by the top three.
The top of this squad had all been captain once and carry fear of some big secert between them. The lowest heard or happened to been caught wind of what that is but doesn't understand. She knows not to tell the next from her as it make him disappear during one the missions or worse.
There was always worse. Each environmental update and team mission following it had scarier and worse monstrosities. These past missions has been sending them to uncharted mapping areas of the recreational database of off world bases. The main missions has been the same tasks; map. Survival and protect a client. Sometimes it was defend a position.
The top three talking over alcoholic beverages while the lowest was dish washing and preparing breakfast for the day after. Unlike the team - she close to, these folks track the mission types. Talk of the same patterns and same enemy weaknesses. The intoxicated blabbering of how useless the lower squad is and pity they lost purpose since there wasn't human contorl players anymore.
Sparking drunk insight about a glitched plant moving outside the camp boundaries, trying to find a way in. Prompt the others to dismiss such npc plant being or say it could be a glitched soilder who lost their code. She really shouldn't have heard them say these things but it was true too.
She wants to stay happy and ignorant of this turth, dismisses it as drunk banter of higher officers. Ex-captians that lost their mental health since they became ranked. The three were soon reprimanded by the assistant captain and sent off to find Upsilon. The member before Phi. They are to intoxicated know she was there. She was the lowest for them to even bother caring about her safety. Not even the assistant Captain bothered to check where she went.
She careful sneaks back to the bunker to sleep. Wide awake as she heard Upsilon getting his punishment like always and tossed into the sealed room.
Their numerical value was basic. She's Phi. Beside everyone else was ranks higher onwards. In examples being; Upsilon, Pi, Stigma, Delta and highest is Alpha. Even then, that is skipping many between and some are never coming back.
She was maybe thinking to hard about the conversation and the Greek alphabetical too hard. The vague shot of strange runic letters seem to haunt her since that talk of glitches and spoken secerts. She is not even sleeping the short hours she could be; wondering what the pattern of scribbles are. These scribbles aren't the clear enough image to read or understand why.
The drill siren sounded the new captain is going to change up things. This was someone who bested to get the secert mission and returned with high praises. Phi isn't sure why there seems a bad feeling.
The training ground was covered in pouring rain, but if stepped out of alignment that stangnat pool would be blood red.
Upsilon was particularly weird today, he wasn't himself. He was looking around confused and held himself up higher at the shoulders. It wasn't the only shock as they lined up.
The new captain is tied to the punishment pole. The commander is here looking down upon the squad. The fabric of his uniform never stays wet while the pouring rain hits harder. It's louder and thunder. But it is silent as the assistant captain takes aim.
The squad stare forward blankly, aware this is war and that sometimes the enemy is those beside you. The gesture is made and the shot is fired. The squad don't waver, not moved by emotions.
Except... Upsilon. He turned away and shivered in shock. It was as if it was his first time. He was about to be singled but Phi kicked him straight. Commander glares deeply and most at Phi for making a sound of a kick. He pointed her to stand forward.
"Is there something the matter?" He hissed down at her.
"No sir. I am just clumsy. My shoe wasn't on properly, sir." He looked to the others and they nod at this. They all know she clumsy and this was her trait.
"No more being clumsy. I expected better from you." She is confused of this, "There is no drill today. Dismissed." They all salute to this and move as a single file away. She waited last as per always, "Your not meant to be Phi." She heard hissed from the commander.
The top officer and the assistant moved the body of the dead captian off the post.
They were confused too. They looked her way in checking her deeply and pass off a doubted expression.
Phi stares blankly out upon the blood rain, she not in her place and thus the world is gloomy of horror. The equipment was busting up, and there was corpses never moved in places. The boundaries fence was patchy and broken. The beasts have trails into the camp, eating the corpses.
This was the turth, she wasn't clumsy but afraid of the real glitches before her. They may have took away that original corpse but the spirit of the dead sits there lamenting their wrong.
The others too, the corpses that hadn't been moved, just others that lament not able to move on. It does occur to her that maybe this way the world she always had seen and hide from.
It was the glitched. They whisper. But she thought it be the other way, the more normal rain fall was the glitch. She was being to low a rank to even have the rights to ask. But there is someone she can talk to but his acting not normal. No drill will mean his should start on the jobs.
"Phi." The lowest of the top officers approach and with knowing she did what she did for Upsilon to not be punished.
Out of the three top officers. This one was the only one she felt safe to approach about worse things. She expressed concern of the equipment being broken for and they both witnessed that she interacts with the decaying objects. This was the officer that seems to kept her secret about having issues with glitches, and has been the go to about these glitches.
"Is the captain still there?" The officer soon whispering this and brings herself to look at the spot of pooled blood. Indeed a spirit still there. She nods gentle at this, "You have seen others. Right?" She nods at this, "You should go talk to them all." She frowns concerned, "I will look into Upsilon. He doesn't react to killing like that." Nods at this plan, "Talk to the captain last. It would be hard to not be watched with the commander around. His looking for folks like Upsilon. Those acting strange. I know your not. But he will mistaken it."
She nods again to this officer and leaves in salute. There was a worry since the officer went out of the way to talk to her, out of place and out of order. She steps carefully through the mud and alone in the pouring wet rain. Being soaked through, cold and hungry. But given she's the bottom ranking, they will not have saved any portion remains for her. No towels or spare clothing. Maybe it be easier to wash away this blood rain then to smear it around.
But she can start with the hidden corpses in the storage areas. Someone was knifed in the kitchen. A gun man that should have guarded the gun vault and the one inside the gun vault - misfire from improper maintenance.
There will be those in the player locked areas but she doesn't want to be the next shot at the pole. The bunk had someone that didn't wake up. The guy strangled at the climbing net and the mangled one on the observation tower, who fell to their death. A lot of them.
Not as often as the corpse encounters in the mission places. Likely training accidents or cover up deaths. There will even be player avatar that may not be piloted by Human intelligence but are capable of their own thoughts - especially those above a threshold ranking and had scored the zone level board system.
They have weird names, creative and abnormal as the humans that body borrow. It's what she suspected of Upsilon strange behavior, a body borrowing type. Maybe some of the more strange corpses across camp were due to human body borrowing. There is a creep stuck through the shower hall wall, but his on the men's side.
She plucked up the courage and uses the excuse of wanting a shower to go there.
The Creep in the wall is the easier to talk to without looking crazy. It would be worth listening to what he has to teach or tell. This talking to the dead seems a daunting task that might take a while and a few secert fake morning drills to accomplish. She will make sure that everyone was doing anything else.
For now, enters the shower block. She doesn't remove her clothes but instead helped herself to towels. She makes it around the changing room and listens intensely to the white noise. She vague could see those blurred words of runic handwriting. The words bleed the wall ignoring the effort of illusion over the curtains and pipes that should break the image if imprinted on them.
It meant that these blurred words were suspended in the air then being on a surface. It has taken her this long to even note that there an edge to these floating unreadable signs. Maybe she could figure if this a touch surface next or not. If it was solid mass with density.
While these vague creepy words are visible, sound cuts to ragged breathing and the occasional louder gasp. She tighten up the towel and attempted to calm her nerves.
She noticed a black stream smears, a blood cover hand scrapped these walls not long ago. The rigid gasping holds her icy hands and travels a shiver down her spine. The loud bang of someone outside firing a gun or trying to break the wall.
A fly such on grease paper. A harsh clunk and the gasping started up again. The area was tinted blue and white light figures enact what led to the death of this person stuck in the wall. A group of human players laughed at a person as the shot gun force sunk them through a broken wall.
There was no corpse but only that the person was now 'missing in action' and filed as dead when the score board reset. It was as if the wall was a rubber mass and took them hostage. They can't live and they can't die. Stuck as a peeper in the men's shower hall. The blue fades and its back to the blood remains.
"What was your name?" She manages to ask louder enough and with concentration towards the shower wall that divided between men's and women's. The ghost takes a while in reconginzing she was talking to them. And once it did, it checked if they were alone. Peering about the buildings premises before speaking.
"I was once the instructor for how to adapt with defense. A strategy sort in survival. I was mostly for teaching the new players how the hub system worked." She certainly wasn't sure of such an answer, "Don't you notice that the world is tinted red when your exposed to danger?" She did know about that, "But if you hide and focus while it is, it will track and pin point where and how many."
"I had no idea of such a feature... and what exactly this hub is." It seems to make the spirit instructor gleam as he was allowed to finally do his job properly, even if the circumstances aren't. He explained how to bring up and change the transparency of these plexiglass windows she only really now felt there.
Only when she was in the horror side that this window was visible and now with the settings altered for just her alone (a keen detail she needed in care otherwise the top commander will have her taken to the pole next).
She listened and learned the instructors even more advanced knowledge and was a nerd for his job. He had gave her access to the developer windows for debugging.
He explained that a glitch made by players will have abnormalities of code. That each system update was another log of code stamped by the time of creation. He warned about the danger of typing anything into it or changing it. It could cause a entire network issue for all connected systems to this one.
He theories that if the code breaks so much, it will bring humans back to this nuclear waste land. But then she was confused about what nuclear waste. The instructor having passed all he could wisdom and knowledge.
He left the trapped wall and was finally free. She cleans herself properly as it was nearly time for kichten duties. She thinks about this new stuff deeply. The system prompted had then followed.
'Congratulations in becoming a developer. We of the software creator team wish for you to not break the locks deemed 'preservation'. You were likely already debrief of the danger this can cause. We don't want our own military and hospitals out to riot.
Otherwise here is the game system that you can bend at your hearts content. Mods and maps. We will give you needed information to territform new worlds or create an original with the realistic data sense.'
She had read this through twelve times while in her shower, trying to fathom many parts. Humans created this system. Gave it to other humans to make into this sick place. Open to any human to just break as they please? But wouldn't a developer be the creators?
There seems a lot of bits wrong and she will just have to find more from the abnormalities or speak to players herself about her questions.
She dismisses the window once she was changed and goes through her basic status window.
'Nameless soilder rank Phi.' Her overall status weren't fantastic each bellow 5 except her real skills. Survival lvl 10 but it was red and locked. In further check with the debug menu, it was locked with 'preservation'. She chosen to not change things yet. Especially with the top commander acting as executioner and Upsilon being a player puppet.
Yet it does spark interest in her to wonder about others status.
In the depth of her brewing thoughts, she has already began kitchen duty. This time she was following the instructions of the chief hands. That's all that's left of him or all he ever was. She follows their direction and it wrote things on a blank floating plex window.
He would write things like if she was cutting to slow or the random commentary of explanation about heat conducting. It used examples that were a mechanics use. He would talk about chemistry when she interacts with the seasonings. She was bemused of the insight and triggered being 'the mechanical cook' side quest.
A yellow status window. There wasn't a reward as such but a title and skill points. Not a physical reward as of yet. It's the first time she was aware of this side quest or that she could even be given requests in such a fashion.
It makes visiting these spirits easier with an excuse. She simply had thought about accepting the request when the yellow panel changed to the percentage of completion and tints as easier (green) or harder (orange). She notices there was abilities to repeat this side quest as in returning back to cook for the next meal would trigger it again.
There a score ranking for the side quest at the fridge, and as expected there is human player named topping the chart. So it wasn't a feature left untouched. She peers particularly of the user name at the highest score, she met them personally and did her quest. She already knew that she has her own side quest. Every member does, but these spirits are those without a physical presence.
"Phi!" She startled a little at turning around at the dinner hatch.
The mid ranker gang was here being dicks as always. Here to be food critics but refuses to share the chores of cooking and cleaning the kitchen. Gladly the score of her cooking isn't based by their bais. It is the methodology and the timing that the spirit cheif scores the leader board.
"Piss water and dung meat as always." They laugh between them as children. Lowering her confidence and keep her down bellow them. She did waver a little in trying to keep a straight blank expression, she doesn't want them a reason to got at her with worse.
They had escalated things and there been instances of such events getting out of hand. She shared punishment with them over it as it's shares as team issue. Not individually. Some captains were not nice about it either.
"Enough and move. If you don't want it then starve." Upsilon speaking up and was soon the spark of stares. It been a long time since he stood up for himself, let alone cared for someone else.
"Lowest rank Upsilon is right. Move it along if you don't want to eat." The officer on Phi's side. The lads here for trouble scatter off, taking trays of spooned food portions with. Phi continues plating the last few meal trays. There's gladly one aside for herself. She diligent at cleaning away the kichten before sitting for her own meal.
The side quest completed at food score passing C and cleaning +B ranking. She didn't rank onto the leader board on the fridge. She takes her tray around and joined Upsilon and Officer Tay, as indicated by the tag above thier heads.
Upsilon's threat level and status of 'active user' was not the same as the yellow for Tay. Tay has a star which must be a indication of her officer or past captain position. Phi had seen these things before but pretended to not, fearing the glitching rumors.
"Thank you." Upsilon muttered while Phi lifted her utensils to use. She softly nods in a smirk.
"We are even." She retorts as she takes in her meal. She goes to silent eating. The mess hall is full of clicks and clanks. The tossed away waste bin is a little filled and the plate washers got started. Officer Tay slips a letter to Phi before leaving. Phi tucked it away before anyone would confiscate it.
A general idea that they were excuses to skip some the drills in exchange of her completing the spirit tasks. Maybe a warning about the fragile situation this place is in. But she can't read it here or right now. Upsilon leaves and Officer Tay followed with. Left Phi to her own and in the entertainment of the unhappy bad mouths. Once Tay left, the mid ranker squad started their whispering again.
Insulting the lowest of them and blaming her at not being good enough for anything this military institution needs. They all began to critique if she even be good enough for anything and had started wondering why she was here at all. Worse then any civilian missions they had. She can't stop them bad talking while she hasn't even left the room. It was the price of being the phi ranker.
She was soon playing with her empty plate, they still haven't left and they should have. They had been talking about her rudely, playing her nerves. She guessed now was that they were just waiting for her reaction, the response to forfill their bad behavior needs. Thus far she able to play that she ignored them in focus to ear well. But now it was past that. This was ridiculous.
"There is no one here but us." The leading twit puts himself across her, "You can't shot a gun. You can't climb the obstacles. You can't run with us in track. What exactly are you good enough for?" Reached to smoothly play with her face and she kicked him under the table.
A well placed kick that was a place that sun doesn't shine. He rolls to the floor and his buddies surround them. Taking her arms. She sighed because... this was the systems made side quest for her. As in this is a side quest that the players or users are meant to interact to change events.
The panel shows she mustn't change the outcome of the event and that she is to keep to her role during this process.
Before she knew about the floating boxes, she used to fight back or that it happened so much that she gave in not reacting at all. She has some actions like kick, cry and scream for help. But she not able to change the determinate events. The outcome was always neutral if she acts a willing victim. If she over dramatic, she given a job in the toilet block. If she completely left it to them, she have a broken something to hid during drill. She already hates the obstacles course drill without injures. Putting the brave front of a broken ankle or arm to do the drill, she not allowed excuses for improper course care.
"Why are you being given extra treatment for? You are no better then a civilian without training." They held her down, so this was going for a worse outcome quickly. This wasn't normal roll of events, they took their time to beat her or insulting her with words more.
So something has changed, maybe she allow some change? The panel advices her to play dead. She guessed not then, that is her normal act. A throw of some torso punches and blood weeps at the corner of her lip. Taking it as if she was the weakness of them all.
The pack leader of these dumbbells had something really up his pants today, heavyweight hits that were breaking things. It was to the point they dropped her to hold him back. She stays laying as she is unconscious now. The muffled of them trying to leave or a scuffle between them. It had not mattered.