NANITE

"Good choice," Johnny said, a hint of approval in his tone. "She's a professional. Cold as ice when she needs to be, but fair. And she definitely knows her shit." Johnny stood then, his massive frame unfolding from the chair, and walked to a nearby reinforced steel cabinet. He opened it and pulled out two sleek MemStream headsets. They looked like minimalist halos of matte-black carbon-fiber, thin and seamless. Across the inner rim, faint neural induction prongs shimmered with a pale blue light, calibrated to tap directly into cortical signal pathways. A row of tiny status LEDs blinked to life as he picked them up. He moved over to the worn synth-leather couch on the side of the room and sat down heavily, motioning for Ray to join him.

"I know that look in your eye, Ray. Once you've set your mind on something, there's no stopping you. Never has been, even when you were a scrawny street rat." A ghost of a smile touched his lips. "But before I let you run out there, I want to see what you've really got."

Ray took the offered headset with a quiet nod and sat beside him, the worn cushions sighing under his weight. Johnny placed his own headset on first. The lights along its rim flared gently, syncing to his neural signals with a soft chime. Ray did the same. He closed his eyes, expecting the familiar jolt of the MemStream interface.

But for him, nothing happened. Just darkness. Ray opened his eyes, a flicker of confusion, then glanced up at the neural prongs in his vision, realizing the issue. His nanites. They were likely blocking the external interface, treating it as an intrusion. He closed his eyes again, this time focusing his will, directing his nanites to interface with the headset, to become the connection. He could feel a subtle, internal shift, a flow of data cascading through his mind, and then…

Reality dissolved. The cold air of Johnny's HQ vanished. The world folded, bent, and reformed.

They found themselves standing in a vast, open field. The sky above was a perfect, cloudless, impossible blue, too vibrant, too clean to be real. Patches of tall, wind-swept grass rustled around them, the simulated breeze carrying a sense of calm, of serenity, that didn't belong to any real place in Virelia. Scattered throughout the field were rows upon rows of floating practice targets—humanoid outlines, some heavily armored, some agile and unarmored, others flickering with randomized, unpredictable behavior protocols.

Johnny stood beside Ray, turning toward the nearest set of targets, his expression all business. "Show me how you handle guns," he said, his voice crisp, authoritative. A gleaming rack of virtual weapons materialized beside them—pixelated at first, then stabilizing into solid, tangible-seeming shapes. Pistols of every conceivable caliber, compact SMGs, heavy bolt-action and semi-automatic rifles, even a monstrous, anti-materiel sniper rifle. The entire deadly armory of a small city's worth of well-equipped mercenaries, laid bare for the choosing.

Ray stepped forward, the weight of what was coming next, what this all meant, pressing down on him. This wasn't just about shooting targets in a simulation. This was an audition. A test. It was about proving that he had the skill, the ruthlessness, the sheer goddamn will to belong in a world where death's scythe was always hovering, always hungry.

He started with a simple 9mm pistol, its weight familiar in his hand. Clean grip. Smooth draw. Two shots, almost too fast to see. Two targets down, center mass. Then a heavier pistol—a .50 caliber hand cannon. The recoil kicked like a cybernetically enhanced mule, but Ray absorbed it smoothly and effortlessly. Three shots. Three hits. Headshots, all of them.

Johnny watched in silence, his arms folded across his broad chest, his expression unreadable.

Ray moved to an SMG. A short, controlled burst. Another headshot. Reloaded with a speed and efficiency that surprised even himself. Another target flickered to life—ducking, weaving, unpredictable. Ray tagged it mid-roll, a spray of virtual blood marking the kill. A sniper rifle next. Heavy, long-barreled, its scope a marvel of precision optics. Ray took a knee, settling the weapon against his shoulder, calibrating the scope with an instinct he didn't recognize as his own. Breathed out. Slow squeeze of the trigger. The round hit dead center on a moving, armored target three hundred meters out.

Johnny finally raised an eyebrow, a flicker of surprise in his stoic gaze. His voice cut through the soft hum of the simulated wind. "Where'd you learn to shoot like that, Ray?"

Ray didn't lower the scope, already acquiring his next target. "Larry has a MemStream rig at The Long Barrel. Got a decent shooting range program," he said, the half-truth tasting like ash in his mouth. "I've been practicing there for a while. When I can afford the time." He had practiced. Obsessively, at times. But these instincts—the way his hands moved with such fluid, deadly grace, the way his vision narrowed, focusing with an almost predatory intensity, the preternatural rhythm of his breath—they weren't entirely his. They belonged to someone else. To Red. A dead man's skills, now living in him.

Johnny said nothing, but Ray felt his gaze linger, sharp and analytical, as another target dropped, then another. He loaded another magazine, the movements automatic, precise. And kept firing.

"That's enough," Johnny said finally, his voice cutting through Ray's deadly rhythm. The simulated world warped again. Buildings, tall and imposing, rose from the virtual ground like awakened titans. Streets, dark and grimy, bled from the artificial dirt. The sky dimmed, morphing into a steel-grey, oppressive and heavy, mirroring the grim reality of Virelia. A simulated cityscape, a concrete jungle, stretched before them, eerily familiar.

"Equip yourself. You're fighting me next," Johnny said, his voice devoid of its earlier warmth, now cold, hard, challenging. "And keep in mind—no mods. No Z-Dragger. This is about skill, instinct, and how you handle yourself when the pressure's on."

Ray nodded, his own expression hardening. "Understood. What are the rules? Do I need to kill you or just… subdue you?"

Johnny smirked, a dangerous glint of challenge in his eyes, but gave no reply. Ray moved to the virtual gear rack. He selected a KronTek neuro-dart pistol—silenced, compact, favored by corporate assassins for its quiet efficiency. One well-placed shot, and most unshielded targets were down in seconds, paralyzed or unconscious. His gaze lingered on the explosives—grenades, mines, tripwires. He passed them over. He didn't have much practical experience with them. But Johnny, he suspected, probably did. He remembered, with a sudden, vivid clarity, how Johnny had expertly thrown those grenades at the Minotaur just a few hours ago.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Next: a razor-sharp hunting knife, balanced for throwing. Two standard-issue semi-automatic pistols, reliable and familiar. A versatile, mid-range assault rifle. And, for good measure, a long-range sniper rifle, complete with a high-grade silencer. Then came the armor: a lightweight, bulletproof vest, reinforced knee and elbow pads, and a matte-black tactical helmet. He looked over at Johnny. The big man was a walking arsenal. He was carrying a massive, drum-fed combat shotgun slung across his shoulder, at least two grenades strapped to his tactical vest, and a heavy-caliber pistol holstered at his hip. He looked like a war-sculpted relic from a bygone era, a time when survival didn't mean flashy mods and neural enhancements—it meant raw grit, honed instinct, and brutal, relentless training.

"Ready?" Johnny asked, his voice a low growl.

"Ready," Ray said, his own voice surprisingly steady.

The simulation blinked—and they were separated, spawned into different parts of the hostile, virtual environment. Ray opened his HUD. A detailed, three-dimensional map displayed to his right. He expanded it. Black. All of it. Except for the single, pulsing blue dot that marked his current position. He was inside a decaying, multi-level parking structure. Derelict cars lay strewn about in various stages of disrepair—some scorched and twisted, others untouched but draped in thick layers of virtual dust.

Ray moved quietly, his boots making almost no sound on the cracked, oil-stained concrete. Debris crunched softly underfoot, the only discernible sound in a vast, echoing space that felt like it was holding its breath, waiting. He climbed a narrow, rusted emergency stairwell, its metal railing groaning in protest under his grip. At the third level, he stepped out onto a skeletal, open-air floor. A graveyard of forgotten machines. Bullet-riddled chassis. Windshields spiderwebbed with impact craters. Crude, faded graffiti scrawled across dented hoods and rusted doors. The distant, mournful echo of simulated wind stirred a tattered, forgotten advertising banner hanging precariously in the street far below.

Ray crouched behind the skeletal husk of a burned-out delivery van, its windows long gone. From here, he had a commanding view of the open street and the rooftops of the adjacent buildings. He pulled the sniper rifle from his back, settled it carefully against a cracked, protruding side mirror, and brought the advanced scope to his eye. The interface flickered to life—thermal imaging, laser rangefinder, wind calculation algorithms. Smooth and familiar.

"No Z-Dragger," he muttered to himself, a reminder, a constraint. "This is raw. Just skill and instinct." He wasn't even sure how the simulation, or his nanite-hijacked interface with it, would react if he tried to activate the Z-Dragger. Best not to risk it. He scanned the surrounding rooftops. Balconies. Darkened alleyways. A flicker of motion—just another tattered banner, flapping listlessly in the artificial wind. Nothing. He closed his eyes—to listen, to expand his senses, to feel the subtle vibrations in the air, the almost imperceptible shifts in the environment. Still, nothing. So he moved. If this spot gave me a clear sniping advantage, Johnny would know it too. He might be heading here right now, expecting me to dig in.

Ray moved to another vantage point, his every motion deliberate, quiet, clean. His breathing, a habit he was finding increasingly hard to break, synced with the imagined rhythm of the battlefield. I need to stop breathing, he thought, a flicker of detached amusement passing through him. For a while now, he had realized that he didn't need to breathe anymore. Just like he didn't need to sleep, or eat, or drink. But the ingrained, unconscious act of respiration persisted. Of course, it was hard for a person to simply forget how to breathe.

Minutes passed, stretching into an eternity, as he stood motionless, his sniper rifle sweeping slowly, methodically, across the urban landscape. Then—something. A thermal flicker, faint and small, at the edge of his enhanced vision. He locked onto it instantly. Near a rusted, crumbling support column, across the street. Just a fleeting shimmer at the very edge of the thermal grid—too soft, too localized, to be environmental. No sound. No discernible footsteps. No weapons drawn. But the heat signature, however faint, didn't lie. He adjusted his position, zooming in. The figure was breathing. Slowly, carefully and concealed.

Johnny.

Then the heat signature vanished, as if it had never been there. This was not normal. A mod? Some kind of advanced thermal cloaking? A trap? His jaw tightened. It could be bait.

Then a sound—not a footstep. A faint, metallic clink. A discarded tin can, disturbed by some unseen movement, rolled slowly across the concrete floor of the opposing building. He instinctively dashed away, diving behind an intact, surprisingly well-preserved sedan. He heard a powerful, concussive thump, followed by the sound of heavy pellets hitting concrete where he'd just been. A heavy-gauge shotgun blast.

Ray aimed his own rifle towards where the pellets came, tried to get a lock… But Johnny was gone. Vanished. A flash of motion, a blur in his periphery. Ray turned—too slow. From his left. A massive body slammed into him from the side, hard. Tactile pain, sharp and real even in the simulation, burst through his ribs. He hit the ground, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs, and rolled, snapping his pistol up—fired twice. Johnny, moving with surprising speed for a man his size, vanished behind a rusted, overturned vehicle. The rounds thudded harmlessly into its armored hood.

Ray scrambled for better cover, adrenaline, or its nanite-induced equivalent, flooding his system. Gunfire barked again. Shotgun pellets chewed through the air where Ray had just been. He ducked, slid between two closely parked vehicles, drew his second pistol, his movements becoming a blur of desperate improvisation. He took cover behind another car, its windows already shattered.

"You said we are not allowed to use mods!" Ray shouted, a note of frustration in his voice.

"Correction, kid," Johnny's voice boomed back, closer now. "I said you are not allowed. Big difference." Then came an explosion from directly above the vehicle Ray was using for cover. Johnny had thrown a grenade, cooked it perfectly, to airburst just above him. Ray dashed away again, a desperate, Z-Dragger-less scramble, as shrapnel flew around him, peppering his armor.

Johnny came at him then like a relentless storm—shotgun roaring, his breath steady, his movements crisp, economical, brutally efficient. The articulated shield from his cybernetic arm deployed with a menacing snap. Ray rolled behind a thick concrete pillar, firing his pistol rapidly to keep him back, to create some distance. But Johnny didn't retreat. He advanced, implacable, a walking fortress.

The only thing that could probably penetrate that shield is the sniper rifle, Ray thought, his mind racing, trying to form a coherent plan. But the moment the barrel peaks out, he'll shred me with that damn shotgun. I need to gain distance. Create an opening. Johnny's primary weapons were all geared for close-to-mid-range combat. Long range was Ray's only potential advantage.

His gaze moved to another grenade as it arced through the air, hit the wall beside him, and fell, bouncing, right next to his feet, its timer blinking furiously. "Shit," he muttered, scrambling away again as the grenade detonated with a deafening roar.

"I can play this game all day, Ray!" Johnny taunted, his voice echoing through the parking structure. Boom. Ray ducked low, rolled under the rusted frame of a burned-out SUV, popped up on the other side, and got off two quick shots that sparked harmlessly against Johnny's deployed shield, doing absolutely zero damage. And he was rapidly running out of cars he could hide behind, and who knew how many more grenades Johnny had stashed away. He'd seen two on Johnny's vest, but that didn't mean that was all he was carrying.

He dashed around a line of wrecked vehicles, heading for the access ramp that led to the lower floor of the parking garage. It was behind Johnny, a risky move, but his options were dwindling. He almost reached it. Johnny fired a stun round—non-lethal, but designed to be incredibly bone-jarring. It hit the ground right at Ray's feet. The concussive explosion rocked his balance. He slipped on the oil-slick concrete. Fell. Landed hard, shoulder first, his head smacking against the ground.