Play 2 Wage: Linked

“You shot him!” I yelled back into the crackling quiet. Despite Max insisting that Tevin would be okay, I was livid. Had one of the traitorous tower dwellers taken the shot? Did they spend all this time getting close to Tevin only to shoot him in the face when his guard was down? I’d rip their arms off and beat them to death with them if only my legs would work.

Ali pushed me back down behind the stacked lumber and hissed a quick, “Be quiet,” before pulling another grenade from her pocket and pulling the primer.

I turned my head and looked over at Rin, who was still furiously typing away at his laptop. What was on his screen made no sense to me, boxes and windows were being opened, copied, and pasted into other boxes before lines of text streamed across and he minimized them to start over in a new window. “How screwed are we?” I asked him, but he only grunted in reply, using a tone that could only mean ‘I told you so’.

I turned to look back towards the door when I heard Jorn’s footsteps once more, just in time to see him come out from behind a ripped up pallet stacked high with bags of concrete that were leaking dust all over the floor, adding to the haze that wafted around in the draft from the flames. He shot off ar few bursts and thunked a grenade across the open area that exploded in a blast of sticky fire that added to the burning stink of the building. He advanced forward a few rows, and then sidestepped behind a pile of stones.

While the return volley washed over Jorn’s armored form, Ali almost casually chucked her grenade over our cover, then ducked back down next to me. I was facing the wrong way to see where it landed, but the explosion rattled the building and drew the ambushers' attention back to us after Jorn stepped back out of view, inviting more bullets to tear splinters from the mass of lumber that shielded us.

“Here, you wanna do something? Drive this thing around while I break into more of them.” Max said as one of his hovering video screens appeared in front of me. I felt something drop into my hands, and all of a sudden I was holding a console controller like Tevin used to use back at the apartment. I blinked at the controller, wondering how Max had created it from thin air.

“It’s not real, I’m just making it feel real for you. Even the Impex can’t create something from nothing. Now dance, monkey, dance! Hahahaha” He cackled as I gripped the controller.

The video screen showed the back line of the fleet of vehicles. Some were on fire, and there was a small crowd of people hustling around, mostly with their backs turned to me. The lighting was terrible, so it was difficult to make out any details, but some of them looked to be wearing older styles of power armor while most of them wore old plate-carriers.

Not really knowing what Max had just given me control of, I stuffed my knife back into my pocket so I wouldn’t lose it for a second time, then worked the joysticks back and forth and pulled on the triggers. I quickly discovered that whatever it was could spin in place with the joysticks, and the triggers raised a wide steel bucket with a two-pronged gripping claw into the view of whatever camera I was looking through. The bumpers controlled the angle of the bucket while two of the buttons opened and closed the claw. Of the last two buttons, one seemed to be useless, while the other turned on a bright floodlight that illuminated the area ahead of me

Now understanding that I was controlling some kind of earth-moving equipment, like I had seen at Rosso’s quarry, I clenched my jaw in determination and pushed both joysticks forward.

I raised the bucket to waist height and opened the claw, causing the vehicle to whine as it surged forward with a low growl of diesel smoke. Catching a pair of the attackers off guard in my spotlight and from behind, I squished them between the bucket and the back of a huge van. They flailed around and fired off a few shots as they died, and without backing up I pushed one joystick up again and pulled the other down, causing the vehicle to spin in place and the bucket to smear them across the back of the van.

Pushing forward again, I rammed the bucket into the side of a parked truck to the left of the van, causing the whole back end of the thing to slide and crash into the next truck and pin another ambusher between the two. As the truck slid, it also threw off the balance of the two guys who were standing in the bed and aiming rifles and a spotlight at us on the other side of the building.

From the left of my screen, off in the darkness behind the line of vehicles, I saw the sparking flares of muzzle flashes and heard bullets pinging off of thick steel plating as the group caught on to what was happening. An arcing spurt of liquid sprayed across my field of view and the bucket lowered to the ground without me telling it to, causing it to noisily scrape against the concrete floor as I drove forward again.

A few people scattered ahead of me, and I had a brief glimpse of Andy as he pointed at my camera view and rushed out of my way. Seeing him working with whoever these bastards were reignited my fury and I turned the machine to follow him. Frustratingly, my vehicle seemed to lose power, stopping its forward momentum and only slowly turning in place. I frantically pushed at the buttons and wiggled the joysticks back and forth in an effort to chase after the scrawny tower dweller.

After a moment of uselessly trying to steer the thing after him, A power armored helmet filled my camera's view, before the screen filled with static and was quickly replaced with a new view that showed a power armored soldier grappling with a small Beau-Cat skid steer.

“They took the camera out. This ones a truck, but the front camera was already destroyed so you’re looking out of the rear facing back-up camera. Have fun! I have an excavator out back starting up, but it’ll take a few seconds before it’s warmed up and ready to rock.”

With a growing grin, I gripped the controller and pushed my joystick forward towards the guy that had disabled my last vehicle. I heard a V8 engine roar and tires squeal from across the room as the camera raced forward and smashed against the back of the armored soldier. Crushing him between the bumper and the heavy equipment and giving me a great view of his armored back-plate as it caved in like a tin-can.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rin asked from beside me, but I spared him no attention as my camera view went a little glitchy and washed over with static for a moment.

I ignored him and pulled back on the joysticks, hearing the truck rev in response and sending it careening off in another direction before a crash from the far side of the building let me know it had hit something else and more gunshots drowned out everything. I couldn’t see what I hit with it before the screen fuzzed out entirely and switched over to a new view of the great outdoors.

This new angle showcased a medium sized dump truck and a huge tangled pile of tree limbs a few meters away. The vehicle's camera had a massive boom arm that blocked off a chunk of one side of the screen, and the tips of two massive treads poking out along the bottom. Using the same control scheme, I raised the bucket and used the tracks to spin the excavator around until the backside of the blue and white building came into view. There were more doors, and I noticed a few more beat up vehicles stashed behind the building and screened by some well trimmed shrubbery. One of the better looking vehicles had a tarp strung up alongside it to create an awning over a mass of equipment and tables.

As I rumbled the excavator in the direction of the building, a pair of wide-eyed guys stuck their heads out from behind the equipment and stared at me on my approach, so I swept the bucket towards them. The two guys scrambled away in different directions as the bucket crashed through the awning and whatever it was they were working on, turning the cabinets and screens into a tangle of broken electronics, bent tables, and frayed wires.

One of the guys ran over to the building and pulled open a man-sized door before darting into the dark interior. I pushed my joysticks forward and followed him towards the building, raising my bucket higher with the intent to smash in the entire back wall when I was interrupted by Ali throwing herself across me and blocking my view of the hovering screen.

The world turned white and a huge explosion blew out my eardrums, leaving me blind and deaf. My eyes recovered fairly quickly, but my ears were filled with a muffled whine that drowned out the hail of gunfire and the crackling from the growing fires all throughout the interior of the garage. I blinked a few times and felt Ali struggle to climb back off of me. She paused for a moment yelling something into my face that I couldn’t hear, and I noticed she had a long cut along the side of her head and half of her face was a sheet of blood. She gave me one last pained look before she rose to silently fire off a few shots over top of the barrier. I turned and saw Rin, still sitting next to me but now hugging his laptop’s screen tightly to his face and curled back up into a little ball.

Max’s clear voice cut through the chaos. “Just a flashbang, your group will be surrounded in a moment if you stay put though. If I give you control of your legs again, can you behave yourself and get further back into the corner? I’ll take over with the excavator and distract the horde.”

I grit my teeth, still angry enough to charge in on my own, but seeing Rin curled back up into a ball and Ali injured and worried changed my perspective. I couldn’t let my anger control me, and had to act if I wanted to keep my friends safe.

“Fine.” I grunted out. “Just tell me when to move.”

“You’ll know it when you hear it!” Max gleefully replied. He was having way too much fun with this whole situation, which should have worried me more than it did.

I waited for a beat, reaching out and grabbing Rin by an arm and Ali by the belt in preparation to run towards the back of the building. I yelled out, “We need to move!”, although I could only barely hear my own voice over the ringing in my ears, just as daylight flooded into the room, the walls all tilted over a few degrees, and feeling returned to my legs all at once.

Taking that as the sign Max had told me to wait for, I surged up to my feet and raced towards the piles of stones and pallets of mortar, yanking Ali from her crouch and ragdolling Rin along my other side as I went. I awkwardly pulled Rin under one arm, changing my grip to grab him around his middle and held him against my side, and ended up just tossing Ali in the direction I was headed after she fought back and I nearly accidently smashed her against the next pile of boards.

Luckily for Ali, my aim was solid and she landed on top of a battered mesh cage full of rounded stones. She skipped across the top of the pallet and I got what would have been a humorous view of her shocked face any other day, just as she rolled over and fell out of sight. Jorn stepped back out from behind his cover and started blasting with his rifle again, his once pristine mirrored armor now splattered with chips and cracks from absorbing so much fire.

I slid around the next mound of stones and let myself fall back behind it, depositing Rin in a pile next to me. When my back hit the stack of rocks, I felt a sharp stabbing pain shoot through me and realized the arm I had used to toss Ali was now hanging limply to my side and I could no longer move it or feel my fingers at all.

“You took a bullet to the shoulder during that dash. I guess they threw out the plan to capture you. Don’t worry though, I’ll get that clotted up and stitched back together pretty quickly. It'll take a while until you can use that arm again though, so I’m going to numb it out and drive these things around for now. Just hold tight for a minute while I run these guys down.”

I grimaced at Max’s comment as I felt my whole shoulder and arm go completely numb. I turned my head to check on Ali and saw her slowly picking herself up from the floor behind the next pallet. We caught eyes just as she raised her head and she gave me an impressive glare, a look I’d never seen on her normally stiff and professionally polite face.

Jorn ducked into cover next to Ali, distracting her from me and drawing a smattering of bullets that tore into our cover as we all hunkered down for a moment. My hearing was starting to return already, something I was getting used to as a benefit of having an increasingly useful AI parasite. I could now faily hear the crunching of steel and the rumble of a massive engine as the excavator ripped the back of the building to shreds, all while more trucks, vans, and heavy equipment started playing bumper cars and grinding the opposing force between them.

The shooting towards us all but died out, and I took the opportunity to peek over the top of the pile of large stones we were hiding behind. The back of the building was utter chaos. Most of the rear wall had been torn out by the excavator, which was now spinning around and smashing its bucket into anything that got in its way, while the still operable vehicles rammed into each other and crushed what was left of the attacking force between them in a moshpit of squealing tires and twisted metal. Fire coated swathes of the stored building material, mostly in the front row of vehicles and the pallets and shelves on the far side of the clear space near the entry doors.

When I turned back and sat back down behind cover, I spotted Jorn as he crouch-walked up to loom over me, leaning in close with his broken faceplate. He didn’t say anything at first and just stared at me through the hole in the broken visor, his blackened and bloodshot eye angrily looking into mine.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on, but we are going to have words when all of this is said and done, Consul.” He shouted over the crashing demolition derby going on nearby. With his threat made, he rose back up to his feet and clomped around the rock pile, firing off carefully aimed shots with one hand and holding his other arm up to cover his broken helmet.

I frowned, wondering how I would explain all of this to the serious soldier. While I fretted over the man's threats, Ali crawled over to me while favoring one of her legs. She sat up and fell back heavily next to me, leaning against my side and using her arms to pull her leg into place. She fumbled with a pouch on her belt with a small loop of bright orange cord tied through the latch.

I glanced over and checked on Rin again, seeing him rapidly blinking his eyes and struggling to work on his, surprisingly undamaged, laptop once again. After a quick look to check him over, I didn’t see any bloodstains or bones sticking out, so I decided he was okay. I turned back to Ali and found that she had opened the pouch and was wrapping a strap around her leg.

“You got hit?” I asked her, but she either ignored me or did not hear me and continued working on the strap, cinching it tight and then twisting a little handle around a number of times and causing it to clamp down and leave a deep indent in her thigh.

Everything had gone to hell so quickly, but it was starting to seem like we might be through the worst of it. With the attackers busy being turned to paste by Max’s commandeered vehicles, and Jorn advancing on them, I wondered what had become of Katie. I had not seen her since the very beginning of the firefight, but assumed that Jorn would not have left her on her own unless she had either already been killed or was relatively safe.

That thought was quickly abandoned in favor of what I really wanted to do, what I needed to do, which was to check on Tevin. Last I had seen he was still lying prone in the middle of the clear space while the bullets and grenades whizzed by over him. Max’s word that his suit would stabilize him had to be true, or… I don’t even know how I would react.

While the back of my mind warred with itself to sort out my priorities, tinted by an insidious undercurrent of creeping guilt at the brutal deaths I had just dealt out, I refocused on my surroundings. Ali needed help immediately with her wound, she was fumbling with the little kit she had opened and looked to need another hand. I pushed the thoughts aside and quickly discovered that she had indeed been hit in the leg, a through and through shot a few inches above her knee. I ripped her pant leg open as she ripped a packet of gauze apart with shaky hands, then took over as she struggled to stuff it into one side of the wound.

“Hold still, talk me through this. I think I know what to do.” I tried to reassure her, glancing at her face and seeing her gritting her teeth. Despite it all, her carbon-infused steel-reinforced will held and she gave me one of her quick little nods, which in turn reassured me. If she was still present enough to be herself and give one of those nods, things couldn’t be too bad.

“Pack the gauze into the wound, both sides.” She grunted out between clenched teeth.

I nodded in reply and followed her instructions, wincing with sympathy as I prodded the bundle of gauze into her leg with a finger. She let out another muffled grunt and I looked over to check on her again, getting an angry look in return before I grabbed another packet, ripping it open with my teeth before stuffing the other side of her wound, this time causing her to let out a stifled scream.

“Almost there. Bandage now?” I asked, rifling through the little medkit. She nodded again, and I pulled out a rolled up bandage from the pack, and noticed a little pen thing clearly labeled in bold letters “PAINKILLER”.

I shifted around and awkwardly pulled her leg up into my lap so I could use my one working arm to wrap it around her leg, taking a second to rip the bottom of her pant leg off entirely. After I finished with the bandage and before she could tell me not to, I popped the cap off of the painkiller pen and jammed it into her thigh above the wound. She had endured enough thanks to my decisions for the day.

“Damnit, sir, I… didn’t…” She trailed off as the painkiller quickly kicked in and her pupils dilated.

“You’ve done enough, we’re through the hard part, thanks to you.” I smiled at her, before dragging one of the loose stones over and propping her leg up over it. “Rin! Make sure she stays put, I’m going to go check on Tevin.”

Rin, slightly scorched and entirely disheveled, looked up from his little ball and gave me a worried look that I’d never seen on him before.

“No arguing this time, just do it, I’ll be right back.” I ordered before peeking up over our cover and dashing out towards Tevin’s limp form in the middle of the floor.