Chapter III

Lunch. 12:30 PM. 30 minutes and counting. We chose Ian and Sindhoor to get the keys. The rest of us headed over to the FC to get what we needed. I yanked open the FC doors and we all streamed through. The athletic director was sitting in his office, but rose to greet us when we entered.

"You guys need anything?" he asked. He seemed nervous, almost hyper.

"Hi, Coach!" came Katie's reply. "Can you help open the storage shed? We need the softball equipment."

"Sure," he replied, "let me find the keys."

We waited patiently while he rummaged in his desk, and before long, he pulled out a set of ordinary-looking keys. Without a word, he stepped around us, closed the door, and shut the blinds. He then stepped back to his desk and looked at a small board on the wall. It read "HI COACH JONES!" with some marker decoration around it. It was signed by both Katie and Gretchen. He glanced fondly at it for a second, and then reached up, grabbed it, and set it on his desk. Behind it was a small keyhole.

"Stand back" he warned us. He inserted the key and gave it a quarter-turn. Suddenly, the floor started shaking, and the ground directly below the key started lowering. A staircase began to take shape. As it formed, my hands started sweating in anticipation. As it finally stopped, there was a knock on the door. Stuart cracked it open, just far enough to let Ian and Sindhoor through, and then quickly shut it behind them. Without a word, Coach gestured for us to proceed down.

Lincoln was the first to enter. He seemed eager to bound down the steps, but when he got to the base of the staircase, he stopped and his jaw dropped in astonishment. For there, in the surprisingly well-lit room, was every kind of gun, sword, spear, bow, and all other handheld weapons that ever existed. As I entered, I noticed that there were also some weapons that had only appeared in videogames or books. Laser rifles, plasma-yield grenades, and the Omniblade, just to name a few. I shook my head in wonder and awe. How had our school kept this a secret for so long?

"Whoa," Ian exclaimed, "they actually made an Omniblade?"

I replied cheerfully, "Yep."

However, my awe was to be short-lived. Before I had a chance to really examine anything, Coach grabbed me and pulled me back up the staircase. I struggled at first, but then I became curious.

"Give me your watch-hand," was his command. I complied, wondering what the heck this was going to do. He looked at my watch, and tapped the 'start/split' button. Suddenly, a thin holographic screen popped up from the watch. I looked on while he typed in a 4-digit passcode. 9803.

He paused with his hand over the 'enter' button on the screen, telling me, "Brace yourself."

I nodded, and he tapped 'enter'. I heard a faint whirring and then a click. Almost instantly, my vision went completely dark, but I knew that I was still awake and on my feet. Then, a strange tingling sensation started from where my watch was, and slowly spread to the rest of my body. The tingling quickly turned into a pins-and-needles sensation, and then a wildfire slowly spread across me. I couldn't scream or clench my fists in agony, in fact; I couldn't utter a sound, let alone move any part of myself. I was suffering in my own private hell. The pain was unbearable.

Then, almost as soon as it had started, it was over. My nerves returned to normal. My vision came back. I looked at my hands to make sure they were still there. What I saw was not what I expected to see. My hands, instead of being flesh-and-bone, were cybernetic. I rolled up my sleeves, and sure enough, my arms were too. Without looking, I knew that my legs and my torso had also changed.

As I looked back at Coach, he told me, "Press your index fingers against your temples." I did, and I heard a click. Glasses had slid into place over my eyes, giving my vision a slight yellowish/orange tint and a HUD (Heads-Up Display). In the lower left corner of the HUD was a miniature map that displayed my surrounding 50 meters, with people displayed as little arrowheads pointing in the direction that they were facing. In the lower right corner was a set of 4 icons, none of which I knew the function of.

I asked, "Coach, how exactly am I supposed to use all of this?"

"Jack," Coach responded, "you've played Deus Ex: Human Revolution before. You should know what to do with these augmentations and how to trigger them."

"Okay…but how did I get these in the first place?" was my response.

"When you got surgery on your broken arm, we ordered this done as well. We knew this was coming all along," he replied nervously. Before I could question him further, he sent me back down the stairs into the armory.

I looked around, and since I didn't really know exactly what we were going to be up against, I chose to use an all-purpose loadout that I sort of had in my head once I'd heard of this. Although I was tempted to use the AR2 Assault Rifle (which could shoot, in addition to bullets, energy pellets that 'fizzled', or dissolved whatever they hit), I decided on defending myself with dual-wield K80 PDW's (mainly because of the faster firing rate and efficiency), each of which held 40 shots in a clip, for a total of 80 bullets before having to reload (hence the '80' in the name). I also grabbed a Nanotech Sniper Rifle for covering fire and support. After examining all of the grenades, I chose plasma-yield over fragmentation due to the fact that, while they do tend to knock out more terrain then frag grenades, they are ultimately more controlled and won't kill allies as much.

I strapped 3 of the grenades across my chest, put my K80's in holsters on my hip, and slung my Nano across my back. As I went to collect ammo for all three of them, I noticed 3 boxes on the bottom of my HUD. They had small icons for each of the weapons that I had picked up, with a '0' beside the guns, and a '3' beside the grenades. When I picked up ammo for the guns, the numbers changed accordingly to suit the total ammo count/clips (ex. 800/10 for the K80's). When I loaded the first clip, a fourth series of boxes appeared on my HUD. They showed the number of shots loaded in each weapon/amount of shots that could be loaded in the clip whenever I pulled said weapon out (ex. 80/80 for my K80's) on the top, and just below it was my reserve ammo.

I was finished with my selections before most of my friends had picked up their collective jaws from seeing all of the weapons. Maybe it was the augmentations, maybe it was the fact that I tend to work twice as fast as other people, I don't know. What I did know, however, was that it was 12:40 and we still needed food.

"Guys, come on!" I shouted, "We have 20 minutes left!" That got their attention, and they immediately started picking around to look for whatever suited them. The first person (aside from me) to finish choosing was Ian, in part because he knew his way around guns and war machines better than all of us. He came up with a L96 strapped across his back, a suppressed Glock in a hip holster, a Microtavor in his hands, and an Omni-tool strapped to his right arm.

"All set?" I asked him.

"Yep," was his reply, "ready to go."

After about a minute, Jessica came up. It appeared that she had gone straight for the archery equipment, as she only had her bow and arrows.

"Katniss Everdeen, are we?" Ian quipped.

"Oh, shut up!" was Jessica's reply.

After about five minutes, half of us were done. The other half was still walking around, not touching anything. By this point, I was getting a little frustrated (and hungry).

I walked up to Katie, and putting my hands on her shoulders, asked, "What's the matter?"

"Why?" she replied, almost tearfully, "Why are we doing this?"

"We have to survive," I pointed out, "don't we?"

"Uh-huh," she muttered.

"There ya go," I said. I dropped my arms and walked back to the stairs, where Ian pulled me aside and we discussed strategy while we waited for everyone else.

After five more minutes, everyone had finished. 12:51. Almost no time to get food and set up. Everybody except for Stuart and I hurried back out to go grab a bite. We followed more slowly. He never gets lunch anyways, and I don't need food. When we got to the lunch corner, he pulled out a toolkit and a device that looked like a very basic calculator but with a red switch on the top. He flipped the switch and pressed a few keys. As I began to wonder what it was, the toolkit in front of him jumped open, and out came a small turret, which quickly grew into a red twin-minigun mount complete with rockets and a targeting LED.

The finished turret looked like this: and the toolkit had looked like this:

I stood there for a second before shaking my head in admiration. It was just like Stuart to find a TF2 weapon and bring it into real life. Ever since I had introduced him to the game, he had enjoyed it.

"Buildin' a sentry!" Stuart quipped, and we both laughed. He then pulled out a thick armband and strapped it on. As I leaned closer to see what it was, a screen came to life with varying icons and meters on it. One of the icons looked like the turret, another looked like the dispenser from TF2, and another looked like a wrench, only with a number beside it, which read '1000'.

"That's interesting," Stuart muttered, "in TF2 you only get 200 metal, but here, I get 1000. Huh."

Just then, everybody else came back. "Are we all ready?" I asked.

Ian scanned everyone's faces, and replied "I think so."

12:55. 5 minutes. While everybody was gulping down their food, I experimented with my HUD and equipment, and figured out what the icons meant. I activated the first one, and I saw the corners of my vision flash. I waved my hand in front of me, but I couldn't see it. Lincoln turned to where I was, and jumped back in surprise.

"Where did Jack go?" he exclaimed. As everyone turned to look, I re-appeared with a laugh. I decided to test out the second icon, and to my dismay, it didn't seem to do anything. I then re-activated the first one to see what the two combined did. In frustration, I deactivated the second one, but left myself invisible and began pacing. Everyone near me suddenly seemed confused, and began looking around. I then re-activated the second icon, and they went back to normal. Apparently, the second icon let me move completely silently. I disabled both of them, and then enabled the third icon. Suddenly, everybody started glowing, and the area around grew dim. I deactivated it, a little unnerved. Then, I figured that it does more than just mess with my vision, so I went behind some bushes and tried again. I could still see my friends. Through the bushes. I was thinking to myself how awesome this was, when my watch alarm went off. I hastily deactivated the third icon and checked my watch. 12:59.

I jumped over the bushes, and noticed a small smoke trail behind me. Bharat was closest, and turned around with a small expression of shock on his face, "Rocket boots, Jack?" I looked down at my feet just in time to see two small vents retract into each one. "No time to experiment," I replied, and then louder, I said, "Guys! We have one minute!" Ian turned and headed for the FC door. I grabbed his shoulder and asked what he was doing. His answer was "I need to get to the roof. I need a good sniping position."

I replied, "Let me help you with that. Grab on." I then jumped and engaged my rockets, and we flew up to the roof, where I dropped him. He thanked me, and I dropped back down. 45 seconds.

I activated my implanted HUD/computer and connected to the school's network. 30 seconds.

I hacked into the PA system and uploaded a few songs. 15 seconds.

I played the first one just as the hour turned.