Chapter 87: The Night Before
The living room of the Rank One Apex Villa smelled like gun oil and sharpened steel.
Eleven teenagers were scattered across the expensive leather couches and hardwood floor.
The usual late-night banter was entirely absent. Instead, the room was filled with the metallic clicks of rifle magazines locking into place, the rhythmic scrape of whetstones against blades, and the quiet checking of tactical gear.
In the center of the glass coffee table, a Vanguard-issued holographic projector hummed.
It projected the military's official map of the continent. It was a bleak, terrifying image.
Ninety percent of the holographic projection was swallowed by a shifting, aggressive sea of blood-red fog, representing the unmapped, monster-infested Wildlands.
Piercing through that endless red sea were thirteen tiny, isolated pinpricks of green light.
The Thirteen Bastions. Humanity's last remaining cages.
