✦ ✦ ✦
Somehow, Llenn managed to evacuate up the steps and out of danger. Either because she was tiny, or lucky, or some combination of the two, not a single bullet struck her.
But still the hail of bullets continued.
“Hyaaa!”
Red bullet lines filled the narrow entryway, and orange tracers added their own touch of color.
She didn’t know if this was actually MMTM, or some other group. But it was highly likely to be the former.
In either case, there was one thing she knew for certain.
There was no longer any escape from this tower.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Dammit!”
Boss had just learned of Tanya’s death. She saw it on the team’s status screen and then with her own eyes.
With Sophie’s body propped up before her, she was able to crane her neck as far as it could go and get a glimpse of the ground below.
Fifty yards down and a few dozen yards away, a man stuck his gun out from behind a barricade and fired. Tanya leaped out of the entrance, noticed the enemy, and turned around to push Llenn back, just before she was shot and dropped like a pile of rags. There was a DEAD tag floating over her body.
“Tanya’s dead,” she announced heavily, right as Lux shot back. The bullet grazed Boss’s cheek. “Dammit!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Lux continued to snipe from his tower perch, all alone.
He made full use of the FD338 he’d paid so much to acquire. In other words, he fired and fired and kept firing.
It was too dangerous to keep using the tripod, because it placed the gun in too vulnerable a place, so he sat behind the pillar and pressed the barrel against its side to steady his weapon.
From there, he fired at a target nearly half a mile away, as small as a sesame seed by the naked eye, but so large through his magnified scope that they appeared to be right next to him.
His bullet circle was pulsing powerfully, so that it was larger than the circle of the scope itself, but right as it shrank to its smallest width, he pulled the trigger. This pattern he continued, again and again.
His mission was to ensure that the people at the top of the spire could not look out from their shelter. That much was just as Llenn’s group suspected.
All the members of MMTM reunited around Lux when they used the teleport tunnel. Since there wasn’t enough room, several of them got stepped on.
In an instant, David came up with a plan to trap Llenn’s group inside their tower, and they promptly began to execute on it.
If the snipers in that tower were able to get a bead on targets below, it would be relatively easy for them to pick off the other MMTM members making their way over. Lux continued to fire, keeping that possibility at bay, even if it resulted in his death.
The FD338’s ten-shot magazine was empty, and the bolt stopped. Lux promptly picked up a spare magazine—he’d materialized a bunch from his inventory earlier and scattered them across the floor for easy access.
He exchanged the magazines and smacked the bolt catch on the left side of the gun with his palm. The large bolt grabbed a .338 Lapua round and slid forward, sending it into the chamber at the rear end of the barrel.
In that brief span of time, the snipers in the other spire poked their heads out and fired their Dragunovs with merciless speed. Their barrels flashed from the side of the dead body they were using as a shield.
But despite the bullet lines flickering all across his location like mosquitos, Lux did not attempt to flee the area. If a red bullet line entered the scope through which he was watching them, then he would avoid it. That would mean it was on course to shoot through his eye to the brain.
But anything short of that, he stayed firm and shot back.
If they hit his body, the only thing that mattered was that he kept his vital zones protected and out of danger. Anything to eliminate a one-hit kill. As long as he stayed behind the pillar and wall, the chances of that were extremely low.
And anywhere outside of those spots, he could stand a few shots.
For example, if his right arm got shot, because it was jutting outside of the pillar by necessity to keep his gun aimed, that was not going to be instantly fatal. As long as he could withstand the numbing pain, he could still shoot back.
But if there was a deflection, or a line he failed to see, or some other prank by the God of Gun Gale that caused him to get hit, he would just have to curse his own body and pay his respects to a worthy foe.
So Lux kept shooting. Right into SHINC’s attack.
Bullets zipped back and forth between the two towers, fifty yards above the ground, keeping things very busy.
Although he didn’t know why, he felt very lucky that SHINC’s ultimate weapon, that PTRD-41, hadn’t fired at him yet. It was powerful enough that it would destroy the entire stone wall he was hiding behind and take him with it.
The trade-off for that monstrous power was the incredible length of the gun, so he would notice right away if they tried to point it at him. For now, though, there was no sign of that. Of course, he did not yet know that one of his earlier shots had killed the owner of the antitank rifle.
But there was something Lux could not hear over the sound of his own gun.
It was David and the other members of his team, deployed at barricades surrounding Llenn’s tower, opening fire all at once and riddling Tanya full of bullets.
“We’ve surrounded the tower and eliminated SHINC’s attacker. Llenn probably snuck back inside. That’s fine, though!” David reported over the comm.
The strategy was a success. Lux had completed his mission. Not only that, he received praise from his team leader:
“This is all thanks to you, Lux. Good work!”
The squad loved David because when he scolded you, he did it in private, but when he praised you, he did it in front of the group.
If only my boss at work were like this. When he gets mad at you, he screams at you in front of everyone, and when he praises you… In fact, has he ever paid me a compliment? No, he just takes the credit for himself. Listen to me, complaining about work in my head.
“Time to enjoy a little overtime, then!” Lux smiled, loaded his next shot, and peered through the scope.
The snipers from SHINC, who had been shooting back so furiously just moments ago, gave nary a glimpse of a bullet line.
He didn’t know why.
Had they figured out they were surrounded and given up their futile resistance, or were they plotting something new?
Lux didn’t know the answer, but he was going to keep firing anyway.
Until a single bullet hit the flesh of his upper right arm.