Light blossomed from under the bridge, followed by the loud rumble of ground breaking and flinging rocks and dirt and dust in all directions. The lighter particles made it all the way back to the base, where it fell on the roof with unsettling tinkling sounds. Red Spy cast his eyes upward in distain, then back down in time to catch the gaze of the Blu Scout. Scouts were notoriously prideful and cocksure, but it didn't take much to read into what the boy was thinking.
When Red and Blu teamed up to face off against these damned robots there was much grumbling and whining and distrust, which was to be expected from men who spent their professional lives murdering each other. With time, however, the teams had become more amicable. Some had even forged friendships. Red Spy had not gone that far, but he had come to respect the one-time opponents as capable allies. Spy was not blind to the fact that once the war with the robots was over, the war between the mercenaries would begin yet again. It seemed only logical that they would turn against each other as soon as the dust settled.
Then the respawn virus began.
It was almost easy to dismiss the first one, the Blu Engineer, as a fluke of respawn. Red Spy remembered the dead man being dragged in by his teammates, each looking and rambling on in a panic as the body remained present. The blue light of that team's respawn never came to consume Engineer. Something was very wrong, and the panic in most of the men present was a testament to that. It was Red Spy who stepped up to restore order, as it were. He had explained that, yes, it was unfortunate that Blu Engineer had met such an unfortunate end. However, he added, this was never outside the realm of possibility. They had always known there was a potential for the respawn system to break down. There had been several times in the past when missions had been cancelled due to errors and even complete overhauls. There was nothing they could do about it, but surely it would be fixed before the next battle.
And that explanation seemed to curb his comrades' nerves; at least until the next battle when two more Blu team members didn't respawn. Spy had stood over the bodies of Blu Sniper and Soldier and exchanged heavy glances with his own Blu counterpart. Ever since, they had lost two more men, a Heavy and a Medic, both from Blu. They scrambled to put together what was happening, why the malfunction was killing only Blus. And why had it not been fixed?
Red Engineer was the one to suggest it might be a virus, a corrupted piece of data in the system, though he couldn't fathom why it was targeting only Blu. The Blu Spy put forth the idea of sabotage, with an accusatory glance to his Red doppelganger. Oh please, Red Spy chided, had he known how to sabotage respawn he would have done it years previous. Plus, as much as he hated to admit to it, they needed as many capable hands as they could get in order to fight the hordes of mechanical men. Blu Spy seemed to eventually accept his points, however reluctantly.
It had been a week since then and they were no closer to a real explanation for the malfunction, which had been tentatively deemed a virus. Now, staring into the eyes of one terrified Blu Scout, Spy felt he could read the boy's mind perfectly.
Who was next?