Abraham opened his eyes, his breath stuck. He was choking, as if his lungs had inhaled fire. His vision was a blir at first, a strange metallic taste on his tongue. The air smelled of burnt plastic and something like cooked wiring and blood.
His cheeks pressed against cold concrete. His eyes weren't opened completely when an explosion tore the air apart. Without thinking, he rolled on his sides.
Something slammed into the ground exactly where his head was a second ago. A chunk of metal skidded past his ear. The sound of the blast hit after, loud enough to make his vision blur.
His ears started ringing. For half a second, there was only white noise and dust.
Then the screaming started. Animalistic, raw screaming. Abraham dragged himself up on his elbows. His palms scraping against the concrete, his skin stinging. Smoke curled towards a shattered ceiling high above. Broken skylights let in strips of harsh daylight through drifting ash.
"Where...?" He couldn't comprehend.
Gunfire cracked from somewhere overhead in sharp, controlled bursts. People were running. Dozens of them. Men, women of different ages, in office clothes, in casual wears. One was barefoot, while the other with one shoe, one clutching a backpack like its a life vest. Everyone with horror on their faces.
None of them looked like they belonged together.
Another explosion detonated near the far wall. Fire licked up metal shelving. Sprinklers hung useless and dry from the ceiling.
"MOVE!" someone screamed. "MOVE OR YOU'RE DEAD!" Abraham didn't recognize the voice.
He didn't recognize anything.
It was a massive place, walls were not visible. There were massive, rusted beams, shipping crates stacked in uneven towers, forklifts overturned. Shadows shifted between the flames.
He pushed himself to his knees.
"Where the heck am I?" His thought wasn't even complete when he heard another blast behind him. Everyone was in panic, screaming, running...bleeding.
Suddenly something flickered, snapping into existence in front of his eyes. Not really in the air, when he waved his hand. It was in his vision, translucent, floating wherever he looked.
[PARTICIPANT: 184-A
STATUS: ACTIVE
VITALS: unstable
ENVIRONMENT: Hostile
SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 23%
He blinked but it didn't disappear. The interface moved with his gaze when he moved his head sideways.
"No...no no no.." it was panic that struck him when gunfire erupted from the second level. Sparks exploded from a metal railing, someone jerked and fell...fell down right in front of him, blood splashing on his face. He froze, the dead eyes staring directly at his, through the interface.
"They're shooting at us!" A woman shriekedThey're actually shooting!"
Survival probability: 23%.
"This can't be real." His throat tightened. It's a dream, a hallucination. But his throughts were broken by another burst of bullets ripping into a stack of crates beside him. Wood splintering, a shard slicing across his forearm. It burned. It was real.
"Why are you kneeling. A man stumbled across him, face streaked with soot. "Get up and run." The man tried to drag him up.
"I don't und....." another explosion cut him off. The interface flickered once and then another presence filled his mind. It was not loud like the man or distorted as the voices in that place. It was calm and professional.
[Welcome, Participant 184-A!]
The voice did not echo in the warehouse. It sounded inside him, inside his mind.
[Orientation phase: incomplete.
Mission Assigned.]
A new window overlayed the first.
[MISSION 01:
Reach Extraction Point Delta within 10 minutes.]
"Survivors eligible for compensation.
Non-survivors forfeit participation".
The voices sounded inside him again. He looked at the man who seemed to be listening to a voice.
A timer appeared on his window.
09:59
09:58
09:57
Abraham stared at the numbers as they tick down.
"Extraction from what?!" he shouted, expecting the man to answer but the man was looking around, searching.
The gunfire sounded again. The man dragged him along behind a big container.
"There's a door on the east side" someone yelled nearby. "I think thats it."
"No! Don't run out in the open." The man beside Abraham yelled back but the first man was already shot.
"They are above us." The man beside Abraham yelled again.
The timer continued.
09:46
09:45
Abraham's hand shook, trying to keep a hold on the sleeve of the man beside him, when another blast erupted above them. The railing above fell down. The man pushed Abraham out of the way, both separating.
A body crashed down beside him.
A woman, early thirties maybe. Hard to tell with the blood pouring down her neck.
The woman grabbed Abraham's shirt with desperate strength.
"They said...." she gurgled, choking on her own blood, "It's a test. They..."
A single gunshot cracked through the chaos.
The woman's head jerked violently, her grip going slack, eyes empty.
For a second, the world went silent, inside him.
[PARTICIPANTS REMAINING: 47
CURRENT: 46]
Someone behind him vomited.
A girl can't be older than nineteen stumbled backwards, whispering, "This isn't real. This isn't real. This isn't real."
Another man grabbed her arm. "If you stand still, you die! Move!"
The timer kept falling.
09:12
09:11
Abraham's breathing turned shallow. This is real. The pain on his forearm, the blood soaking into his sleeve, drying on his face. Even the corpse in front of him.
The probability....23%...is real. He forced himself to look up, at the catwalks, figures dressed in black moving with rifles in their hands. Abraham ran when one of them pointed the rifle towards him, bullets piercing the ground behind him as he ran, hiding behind a crate.
His hands reached his head. "Think!" He yelled, at no one but himself.
"Extraction point....extraction point." He repeated, looking around trying to see through the smoke. A door, an opening, extraction point delta.
He scaned the warehouse. Through smoke and flames, he saw it, or maybe saw just a blurred sight.
A green-lit sign flickering near a reinforced steel door at the far end, above on second level.
DELTA.
People were already sprinting towards it. Too many. Out in the open.
Gunfire immediately concentrated there. On the door, on the stairs. People fell down the stairs, motionless and bleeding.
Within seconds.
[PARTICIPANTS REMAINING: 31]
The interface flickered again.
[SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 18%]
08:37
"No, no. That's not it" he muttered. "Think dammit."
08:24
Gunfire hammered the upper level again. Abraham pressed himself against a dented metal container and forced air into his lungs.
He looked around once more.
Two paths.
To his left; the metal staircase bolted to the wall. It led to the catwalks. To the shooters. Every burst of gunfire echoed from up there.
To his right; a loading dock hallway swallowed in rolling smoke. It was blinding. Sprinklers above it spitting a useless steam.
Someone upstairs screamed. "They are herding us."
Herding.
The word crawled under his skin.
[Adaptability Metric: Pending Evaluation
Decision latency exceeding optimal threshold.]
"What threshold?" Abraham gasped.
The timer bled down in the corner of his vision.
07:43
His heartbeat became the loudest thing in his skull.
Another burst of gunfire chewed into the base of the staircase. Sparks cascaded like molten rain.
People kept falling. People kept running.
His hand brushed against something cold near his knee. A fallen fire extinguisher.
He grabbed it without knowing why, not as a weapon. Just as a weight. Something solid in a place that isn't.
He ran towards the smoke. Someone grabbed at his sleeve. "Are you insane? You cannot see in there."
Abraham jerked himself free, resuming to run while ducking down.
Gunfire ripped across the staircase again.
Another body dropped bu he didn'tlook back.
He plunged into the loading dock hallway. The smoke swallowed him whole, immediately blinding him.
Heat pressed against his skin, his eyes burned. He kept being low. Breathing became difficult but he moved, slowly dragging along the wall to orient himself.
The interface flickered again.
[Strategic Deviation Detected.
Adaptability Score: +2]
"What does that even mean?" he coughs.
The message felt approving. Like a teacher marking a test. Something was watching and evaluating.
The gunfire behind him dulled slightly through the smoke, for a moment. Then he saw a shadow slicing through the haze, with practical precision.
Abraham slowed instinctively, his grip tightening on the extinguisher.