Part 1 - May 20 The Back Door South Bend

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Groggily, Nick opened his eyes, blinking as he scanned around the game room. He thought he’d be on a battlefield, but they were all still here in the game room. His heads-up display blinked with incoming orders to report to his commander.

“Out of your seats, all of you.” The voice behind Nick came from the other side of the room.

Someone barked those orders—who? Nick shook his head, trying to clear out the fuzziness. Whoever had given the orders was coming closer. Suddenly, Nick felt his seat shake.

“Come on, Havill, up and at ’em. Let’s go, we have work to do. Get your squad up and ready to go.”

Nick remembered—it was Joe Martin. Nick’s heads-up listed Joe as the commander. He started to get up, but his head spun violently and a surge of nausea washed over him until he was sure he was going to be sick. Was this what was supposed to happen? Nick hadn’t read all the fine print when he had talked his team into this, so he wasn’t absolutely sure what was coming next.

The squad’s next surprise came when they were assigned as the third squad in the battalion. Nick would be fourth in line to command. He thought they were all supposed to be acting independently. I wish I had read the fine print.

He stood up and the room spun. He’d had vertigo when he came down with a severe head cold last year—whatever this was, it felt like that. Slowly, he moved his head, scanning the room. Joe was walking through, shaking the other players to get them up. Everyone was having issues standing.

Slowly, the brain fog started to clear, and Nick turned to Jim. “Come on, we have to get up,” he urged. He went to each member of his squad, urging them to get up and snap to.

Another wave of vertigo washed over him, but this time he felt energized. Wow! What was that? This was their first tournament—maybe this was normal. Nick felt the energy surge followed by a wave of euphoria. That was the strongest dopamine dump he had ever experienced. He shuddered as the surge of hormone was delivered—or, as the gamers called it, a DD. Maybe you got a DD to kick-start you into the tournament.

How he wished he had read the fine print. He didn’t feel like he was in control, and he felt his grasp on reality slipping away.

Nick heard his name as Joe was giving orders and tried to focus. His squad was assigned to scout out the north quadrant of the enemy town.

“Hey!” Nick called to his squad. “Come on, we have to go to work.”

Nick checked to see that everyone on his squad was on their feet. “Everyone ready?” he asked.

Joe gave the order to pull out, and the entire group filed out of the game room and made their way to the main street of town, where each squad departed to the section they had been assigned to scout out.

Nick did not ask any more questions.