My mind struggled to process what I was seeing. Kain. Alive. He was standing across the staging area, solid and real, his eyes burning with a hatred that was hotter than any furnace. The man I had personally killed, the traitor who had led us into a trap, was back.
Anya let out a sharp, incredulous gasp beside me. "How?" she whispered, her eyes wide with disbelief. She looked down at her own glitching leg, a permanent scar of her near-death experience. "How is that possible? I saw him die. You don't come back from that. No one comes back from that."
But he had. The system, in its brutal fairness, had rules for everything. And we were beginning to understand the horrifying truth. The MVP Protocol was not the only exception to permadeath. I looked at the Ouroboros symbol on Kain's armor. A powerful, established faction like them would have access to the rarest items in the game.
"Respawn Insurance," I said, the words feeling like poison in my mouth. "It has to be. A legendary-tier item. A one-time-use failsafe, just like the MVP Protocol. They must have given one to him."
Kain had used his one and only second chance. His faction had paid a fortune to bring him back from the dead. And now, he had only one thing on his mind: revenge.
His eyes locked onto mine from across the room. There was no mocking smile this time. No smug confidence. What I saw in his eyes was a pure, undiluted hatred that promised a world of pain. He slowly raised his hand, pointed a single, trembling finger directly at me, and then deliberately drew it across his own throat. It was a promise.
The pre-match countdown timer appeared, its numbers stark and final. We had sixty seconds to prepare for a fight we were in no condition for.
The match details flashed on our HUDs.
[MAP: TITAN HANGAR]
[MATCH TYPE: DATA HEIST]
[OBJECTIVE: BREACH THE ENEMY VAULT, STEAL THEIR DATA CORE, AND RETURN IT TO YOUR BASE.]
Titan Hangar. I knew the map from the game. A massive, abandoned starship construction bay. It was a cavernous, vertical environment filled with the skeletons of derelict ships, catwalks, gantries, and cranes. It was a complex, three-dimensional battlefield with endless places to hide and ambush.
And our objective was Data Heist. A game of offense and defense. A game of strategy.
My mind was a whirlwind. We now had two missions, layered on top of each other in this single, deadly match.
Primary Objective (Match): Steal the Ouroboros data core. Win the match.
Secondary Objective (Quest): Find the hidden server room, unlock the quantum-locked door simultaneously, and protect the Data Spike for sixty seconds.
It was an impossible task. The two objectives were on opposite sides of the map. Focusing on one meant sacrificing the other. How could we possibly do both?
"Leo," Anya said, her voice pulling me back to the present. "They're not going to play the objective. You know that, right? They don't care about the data core."
I looked at Kain's furious face. "I know," I said. "They only care about us."
"So what's the plan?" she asked. "We defend? We try to hide?"
"No," I said, a cold determination solidifying in my gut. Hiding was a death sentence. We had to be smarter. We had to use their rage against them. "We split up."
The countdown timer hit zero. The familiar blue light of teleportation washed over us.
We materialized in our base, a fortified control room at one end of the massive hangar. Through the reinforced windows, I could see the enemy base on the far side, a mirror image of our own. Between us was a vast, cluttered space filled with shadows and steel.
Anya immediately took up a defensive position by the door, her rifle ready. "They're coming," she said, her eyes fixed on the hangar outside.
She was right. Two red dots appeared on my minimap. They were not moving cautiously. They were not trying to flank. They were charging straight across the open floor of the hangar, making a direct line for our base. It was Kain and his new partner, the brute named Goliath. They were throwing strategy out the window. They were coming for a straight-up fight. For blood.
"They're coming right for us," Anya confirmed, her knuckles white on her rifle. "They want to end this now."
"Good," I said. A plan, a desperate and insane plan, had formed in my mind. "Let them."
I turned to Anya, my eyes serious. "I have a plan. But it means splitting up. And it means I need you to do the one thing no one in this match would ever expect."
"And what's that?" Anya asked, her gaze not leaving the approaching enemies.
I looked from the charging red dots on my minimap, to the location of the hidden server room on the datapad's map, and then back to her. My heart pounded. This was a plan built on absolute trust. It was a plan that could get us both killed. It was a suicide mission for her, and a race against time for me.
"I need you to defend this base," I said. "Alone."
Anya's head snapped around, her eyes wide. "What? Alone? Against both of them? Leo, that's suicide!"
"They think I'm here," I explained, my words coming out in a rush. "They are coming for me. They'll throw everything they have at this room, trying to get to the VIP who killed their leaders. They won't expect the VIP to be somewhere else entirely. You're not trying to win a fight against them. You are the bait. You just have to hold them off. You have to make them believe I'm hiding in the back of this room. You just have to survive for as long as you can."
I showed her the map on my datapad. "While you have them distracted, I'm going for the server room. I'm going to complete the Oracle's mission."
It was a crazy gamble. If she died too quickly, I would be trapped alone on the other side of the map. If I failed my mission, her sacrifice would be for nothing.
Anya stared at me for a long, silent moment. I could see the calculations running in her mind, the immense risk. Then, she gave a short, sharp nod. The trust in her eyes was absolute. "Just be fast," she said.
"I will be," I promised.
I found a maintenance hatch in the back of the control room, one that was not on the main map. It led down into the service tunnels beneath the hangar floor.
I gave Anya one last look. "Good luck."
"Don't die," she said, a grim smile on her face as she turned back to the door, ready to face the storm.
I slipped into the hatch and disappeared into the darkness below, leaving her to face two furious Ouroboros killers by herself. I was going to win the match another way.