Geional differences with live ammo

  When they got to the ste, Sam pulled into one of the units and the door rolled down automatically. To Gradie, it felt like it had been weeks sihey had left the p separate cars, and he was shocked when, after doing the math in his head, he realized it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours.

  They went out through another ected unit and followed the outside row to a gap between two of the ste buildings, where they would have formed the er of a right ahe space cutting through the er was zig-zagged, as if the square ste units that should have been there had been plucked out of existence, and the quasi-lightning bolt-shaped crete space had a liminal feel to it.

  Philip unlocked a gate ial fence bridging the two buildings ahem across a backyard ihe L formed by the outside fence of the ste. There was a small house across the yard, with a square brick garage addition almost as rge as the inal house, and a wide back pord an outside grilling station that reminded Gradie of the clubhouse. He ted six cameras on the way, and his hazy dream filtered memories of training in the clubhouse and the way the others followed Philip in a near single file told him there were probably explosive traps buried in the yard.

  Ihe house had a firearm iion. Boxes of ammo sprouted everywhere, and all the tables and shelves bristled with firepower. Philip got a ed coffee out of the fridge and sat down in a reer in the er of the living room. He pulled his pho and started skimming through something.

  Sam looked around, disappointed, and sighed.

  “So, how long is it gonna take?”

  “A couple hours, kid, chill out. This job should be dooday anyway.”

  “’t you push that his bail goes through sooner?”

  “That’s not the way my thing works, but it's charming that you think it’s that simple, or that I’m that good.” He held his phone up to his ear.

  Luke came out of the kit with a handful of energy drinks and Gradie and Sam.

  “PS5 in the ba.”

  “Uh, ok. Y’all have fun.” Sam didn’t even look at them. She grabbed some keys off the coffee table.

  “Max, whiit is ol’ girl in?”

  “Hold on, man.” Philip tapped the s. “Sit down and wait, you’ll get behind the wheel—”

  “I wanna see if they fucked up the handling again, or would you rather I found out while—"

  Gradie followed Luke to the ba, where a small coud some bean bags were set in front of a massive TV that took up the entire room and told a story of burgry just by sitting there. The only other decorations anywhere were the fractured drywall, water stains, and bck lines of bars stenciled by the sun through the bent blinds. The low wide shelf on the opposite wall was an armory that promised the TV wouldn’t be stolen a sed time.

  The hours melted away, the weaklings, uo keep their structure against the steady procession of thumbs and fingers moving on the trollers like bees at a hive. Time was broken into rounds, beaten further into gunfights, and shattered into 60 frames a sed.

  The red dash in the er of the s, signifying a single round, became five dashes, thehey-something, then one, again and again. They were on round ten or so, for about the huh time, at that point feeling like a walk to the er store, when Gradie brought up Sam and the highs and lows of the st 24 hours with her.

  “She’s just suspicious of ahat likes her,” Luke said.

  “How do you know? You tried to move on her?”

  “Nah, I don’t shit where I eat.”

  “I’ve seen you talking to Ashley and April.”

  “Yeah, I’ll flirt, you know. Keep things light. Some girls, if you stay quiet and act all monkish, they’ll assume you’re hiding a secret crush. But I don’t let it go beyond that.”

  “So, if Ashley walked in that door and threw herself at you—”

  “Well,” Luke smiled “I guess I’d have to start shitting then.”

  There were a few moments of silend digital violerying to get bato it, but now Sam’s pink face fresh from the shower floated above soft sloping shoulders and goosebumped flesh somewhere in a er of Gradie’s mind, like a gre ing through a cra the blinds, and you have to move around till it hits you in the eye again to find it.

  “You think she was flirting with me, standing there iowel?”

  Luke smiled. “Mute me.” He g Gradie.

  “Mute me.” A few seds after he said it, there was a chime in his hears he had never heard before. Of course, she hadn’t taught him that fun.

  “Yeah, I think she was. But I think she thought you expected her to give it up right there, and she got all offended.”

  “Shoulda just smiled or winked or something.”

  “Maybe. Gotta remember, for a lot of people this is their afterlife, they treat everyone like props and girls are really sensitive to it, if it’s not their thing,” Luke said, with weary annoyance.

  “So—”

  “So now she knows you wanna fuck, and the move is to not deny it when she brings it up, cause she will. If you try and hide it, you’ll be pying catch up forever.”

  Something about the way Luke said it reminded Gradie of walking through the backyard. W so much about what Sam thought felt like something he might do in the Real, the opposite of that electric freedom he was trying so hard to preserve.

  “I’m not even sure I care,” he said after a while. “Lots of irls dang around out there.” Gradie watched the words drop down like paper airphat had caught the air wrong.

  Luke smiled at him sideways.

  “That’s the spirit.”

  As the game tinued, and time resumed its slippery slide, Gradie floated bato visions of the foreshadowed gunfight and tried to perfect the sarios that ended with him saving Sam from a storm of gunfire and them making out on a pile of corpses.

  Sam shouted something a few rounds ter and they walked back to the front room, stretg against the mummification of their spinal cords.

  Gradie hadn’t heard a car pull up or even a door open, but there was Michael, standing in the ter of the room like a ghost. Philip was still sitting in the chair, almost defiantly so, watg as Sam flipped a in the air. It nded oable and she leaned over to look at it.

  “Fuck!”

  “I told you, give it a break for a while and e back to it,” Philip said.

  “I thought that was the first thing we learned,” Gradie said. Sam fshed him a look then frow Philip.

  “It’s pointless. When am I ever going to need a to nd one ?”

  Philip shrugged. “Then fet it.”

  “Fuck you!” Sam said, maybe only half joking.

  “I mean it. Pushing outes isn’t necessarily a good gauge of your skill as a Hardworlder right now,”

  Sam flipped it some more, ign him, so he tinued, louder.

  “—And it’s a double-edged sword anyway. If you nail it, you feel more secure in the instability of the Hardworlds, sure, but If you fuck it up five times in a row, you start to lose faith you effeything here.”

  Sam flipped the over in her fingers like it was hiding something from her. Philip stood up and looked at Michael.

  “Time to gear up?”

  Michael smiled and dumped some tropical skittles into his hands as he walked to the door at the end of the den that used to be a back door before the stru of the brick addition. It beeped and security locks whirred out of pce.

  Inside was a long garage with the SUV taking up one end of it, and menag, now a grey that reminded Gradie of rain clouds ready to burst. The hatch came up slowly and Luke started loading things from the shelves and the bags nearby into its partments.

  Sam had a locker open and was loading her kit. Gradie looked around and reached for an AR that had a tag reading ‘.300 blk’ hanging from the grip, and Philip barked.

  “Won’t be needing that this time around.”

  Sam looked at Gradie without a hint of mockery, just a doe-eyed face of pure surprise, that was somehow worse than a mog grin or something. He looked at Philip, trying to ignore her.

  “Why the fuot?”

  “Cause st time we got into some a you ran off and almost got dropped out o a battery kiosk. This time will be a learning experience for you, just y low—”

  “I’ve had enough learning experiehanks.”

  Philip smiled as if he had fallen into a trap and stepped up to him.

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah, I learned if I’m gon shot at, I’d rather shoot back with an AR. I’m not going into another fire fight with a fug pistol, despite how much I’ve earned for this team with one.”

  “Earned for this team?” Philip drew the words out like he ulling them out of Gradie’s bullet wounds.

  “An,” Michael started, but Philip stopped him with a motion like readying a knifehand strike.

  “I’m in charge of handling personnel, so let me handle personnel.”

  He stepped closer to Gradie, took a deep breath, a his gaze like Gradie had a gun on him but he knew he was bulletproof.

  “Look, I’m gonna waste my time giving you a dose of reality, out of the kindness of my ow. Let me tell you how it goes for most Hardworlders, meaning most of the people in this room, and most of the guys you pn on shooting at.”

  He pointed a sihick fi Gradie, and smiled.

  “You start out lower than dirt, driving around delivering guns to guys worth evehan those ATV wastoids we saw yesterday. Or maybe you just shoot a few cops while the real ones do the real shit. Then once you stay in for more than a day, you get to watch a building with a radio for a week, or run muns, or whatever else someoh a pulse and a body to burn do. And you do that for a year, at least. Following so far?

  “Ok, so I didn’t—” Philip she finger up again and cut him off.

  “Now notice I didn’t mention anything about training, because there is none, beyoing shot by your own guys if you bee too much of an invenience, and even your mem of the job is property of the corp you sold your ass to, so no frolig in some Vault worth more than you could earn in teuries. Oh, and the pay is shit—”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the pay, I told—”

  “Yeah you say that, but you’ll he money if you want to buy ao help you prime, cause remember, no vault. And on the off ce you get out from uhe and freence, you’ll o pay a Keeper to preserve your Hardworld mem, so you actually gain some experience, cause otherwise, you’ll never even learn enough to have the opportunity to catch a stray round from the caliber of people that make up this team, much less get close enough to jeopardize them by running out—”

  “Well, I was never given a choice to do any of that,” Gradie snapped. He g Michael, who said nothing, watg the two of them like they were all just something on TV, so he returned his gaze to Philip.

  “And maybe that’s the way I should have do, maybe I shouldn’t be here, maybe I should have told this big asshole—” He waved at Michael, who smiled big but stayed quiet “— to go fuck himself with his propaganda videos and his friends who wanna dig through my childhood. But I’m here now, and if you don’t trust me to handle an actual on, then cut me lose, or I’ll do it myself.”

  Philip had been smiling and moving is jaw the eime, just waiting to say something, but Gradie was doh it. He put his pistol to his head a his finger irigger guard.

  Why would Michael give Gradie a spot oeam, if so many other Hardworlders would kill to be there? We will return to the struggles of first time Hardworlders who didn't have a Michael to guide them aime, but for now, it's time to get ready for battle. episode, This is my Rifle.