hat-- What the hell am I seeing?"
* * *
After that last blinding bit of pain, vast grassy plains had appeared before Gabriel's eyes, stretching onwards into infinity in all directions. A gentle wind blew across the landscape, making the thick green grass sway under its caresses.
"This is virtual reality."
Gabe jumped as Kathryn's voice came from the sky.
Before Gabe could venture a question, Kathryn began to explain.
"This is a virtual battle field. I am connected to you by headset. Anything you say will be transmitted to me, and anything I say will be transmitted to you. I can even monitor what you see, to a limited extent. If what the Type 5 said is any indication, 2D representations could never recreate what you are seeing."
"Type 5... That's the Sara you mentioned, isn't it?"
As only silence came over the line, Gabe could almost picture her tapping away at her chin, trying to come up with an explanation.
"Ah... yes, but lets not dwell on that right now!" Was Kathryn's eventual reply, apparently unable to come up with a suitable fabrication quick enough.
In the distance Gabe began to hear the sound of marching, hundreds of footfalls stomping towards a goal. Though he could barely make it out, he thought he could see something coming over the ridge to the east.
"You are about to be tested on your ability to remotely command a theoretical BioSuit army."
As the troops came closer, he saw that they were all identically uniformed, with identical builds, and each of them with the same platinum blond hair. Their faces too were all identically shadowed.
"Am I really able to do this?"
There was a pause on the line.
"Actually, so far as you have been designed, you are not able to do this in the real world, which is fine because there is no BioSuit army to speak of. However, in VR you should find yourself very much able to control this small of a force."
There was another pause.
"If I remember correctly the Type 5 had a limit of about 10,000, give or take a few dozen men."
Gabe found himself strangely disturbed by the reply. It was as if Kathryn had finally shed her pleasant mask and was the perfectly fridgid woman he had always feared her to be when she was away from him. The implications of a BioSuit army put a cold fear in his belly while at the same time made a suppressed part of him call out for joy. He chose to ignore both parts and instead focus on what was happening on the field.
In the depths of his brain he felt a connection bloom. Hundreds of tiny thoughts began to pour into his head. They threatened to overflow and drive him mad. With a bellow, he silenced them.
"STOP!"
[STOP!]
Though he had yelled aloud, the voices in his head indeed stopped. Down on the field, so had the BioSuit force, halting some 40 yards from him.
"Did... I do that?" Gabe asked quietly, awe struck.
From the west, another force appeared. As it passed the crest of the hill, and came towards the flat lands where Gabe's force resided, a man in shrouded in black stood behind it.
There was an electric crackling in Gabe's head, and the enemy forces seemed to focus.
[Attack.]
The man in black thrust a sword into the air. It was huge, and at the end came to a deadly looking hook.
The enemy began to charge.
"Jesus christ!" Gabe shouted as they closed with alarming speed.
He started to panic. Hundreds of men (and women?) who seemed intent on ripping him limb from limb were careening down at him and there was nothing he could do.
"Gabriel! Lead your troops!" Engelmacht sounded from above.
There was a ripple in time.
Instinct took over.
Where Gabriel's left arm once was, instead there was a powerful metal tube, with a massive claw.
It shot forward.
[Troops focus. Defensive position. Prepare for incoming enemy. Separate in the hopes of surrounding. There is no line. Fight.]
Purple hair trailed in the wind on one end of the field, while blond hair blew on the other.
Then, there were screams, and blood, and death. The green disappeared, and the skies turned grey.
* * *
In the end, Gabriel's forces had won, but by a negligible number. There were three BioSuits left on the field by the end of the exercise, and only two of them were in one piece. Gabe reflected upon the horrible violence and savagery the two groups had demonstrated. Armed only with blades, they hacked each other to pieces, and when they blades were lost or broken, they bit and scratched their way to victory. They disemboweled each other, chewed through each others throats, gouged out eyes, cut off tongues, anything they could get their hands on. They weren't people, or even soldiers. They were monsters, and beasts, and animals.
Gabe and the man in black, across the way, watched. The last one standing, who had one hand buried in the belly of an opponent, and the other holding his own guts in, flickered and disappeared from existence. A beat later so did the landscape, leaving only white and the two men. The man in black soon vanished, and then too did Gabe.
[farewell]
A white feather fluttered past, and then nothing.