Then he frowned. For there was one player he didn't sense at all, which chilled him to the bone.
Too damn much like him.
And that laughter.
Flashes of his former NCO struck him then, always with the too knowing smile who had a way with intel and feeling out his targets. When they worked together, it was almost scary how well they mastered the field, butchering every target before even Yancey thought they would reach their objective.
But something had changed, those final few months. His bitter hunger when some fool had bragged about how rich Val's father was, something he had never advertised, earning Val hostile looks quickly covered by a mocking grin. And how much his NCO had favored brothels even their most jaded team members avoided, no matter how bitter with battle and hot their lusts burned.
Jacob.
Why was it so hard to recall his name?
The man had been good. Little more than a shadow. Just like Val.
For all Val knew he was lining up a shot even now as Val...
He heaved and rolled and sprinted through the trees once more, hearing the crack of heartwood rupturing, sniper rifle so well muffled that the report itself sounded like a distant cough.
Damn, damn, damn!
Of course Jacob was in on it.
A cold alliance had soured when Jacob had been written up, for all that no one would admit to doing it, but ruthless as Val was, there were certain things he just couldn't tolerate, hurting children being one of them. Val couldn't bring himself to kill a man who he had once fought beside, lives in each other's hands, but he sure as fuck had wanted Jacob gone after what he had been forced to interrupt, heartbeats away from going too far. And the look in Jacob's eyes had been murder. How the hell could Val have forgotten? He hadn't brought Val's false alarm bullshit for a second.
Val had made his report as securely as he possibly could. He then left it to command, and no response at all. Val had no doubt Yancey would back his play. Had a friend of Jacob's buried it? And Val had still been deciding what to do about that when everything had gone up in smoke and hellfire, half his team dead.
What a fool he had been. Val should have killed Jacob while he had the chance. But it was too late now.
Too damn late by far.
Breathe in. Out. He inhaled the sharp fragrance of spruce, oak, hickory and honeysuckle, mixed with the scents of loam and rotting leaves. He could taste the sharp snap of an incoming cold front. Fierce and invigorating. It was all nature's scent, and it had always refreshed him.
His footsteps faded, pain and fatigue easing with his measured pace.
He was one with the woods once more.
"How you doing, Val?"
It was all Val could do not to stumble at the abrupt sound of Jacob's voice.
"That was some mighty fast thinking, back at the car. I thought we had your ass for sure! So what gave it away?" Merry laughter rang through the woods. "Come on, Nightfox! You can tell your old buddy Jayjay. We both love the dark. So what gave the play away?"
Val said nothing as his enemy tried to draw him out, focusing only on the direction of Jacob's voice, and the feel of the two men even now triangulating for the kill.
A soft chuckle. "Sticking to the game. I can respect that. You know I'm a merciful sort, right, Fox? Sure, we get hungry in this game. Nothing like seeing the terror in your victim's eyes. But one shot one kill was always my motto. I never force a man to linger." His laughter turned dark, ugly. "Of course, I can always make an exception for someone special. Someone like you, Val, or someone close to you. Old buddies from better days, am I right, old buddy? Hmm... what was his nickname? Johnny Aces! That was it. Cute enough for the flash houses, Val, I swear to god. And boy that bitch could scream, once we cut his balls off!"
Damn it! A flash of his old friend's laughter, drinking together in better days, Val feeling such kinship to the blond-haired aspiring actor turned soldier who had dreams of one day becoming a star. An action hero on the screen, just like he was in real life. And in the back of his mind, Val had thought of bankrolling him, one day.
Too late now.
Too late by far.
He couldn't imagine the horror and pain his old friend had felt, no doubt looking forward to catching up on old times, only to be caught off guard on the very night of his orientation after Val's father left in a panic with an injured Val, and who knows how long their home had been in Jacob's sights?
Hot rage burned through his veins.
No doubt exactly what Jacob had hoped.
Val darted forward, slipping behind a pair of trees as a bullet cracked against the nearest trunk.
"Almost had you that time, Val! Hey, you ever wonder what happened to your crew? That night we all nearly died, half of us fried corpses before the night was half done, and your golden gut didn't do shit for us then! You ever wonder what that was about, Val?"
A heartbeat's dreadful anticipation. Terror trickling even through the darkness.
The world may blink twice to see him, but a few had no trouble at all.
A girl that loved him, and the sniper at his back.
Val heard the crackle of dry leaves just ahead.
Sensing the moment.
Now!
Val exploded from behind cover, zigzagging as a bullet whizzed by his right ear.
Almost in slow motion the soldier attempting to pivot around him began to turn, predator becoming prey, and Val could imagine the panic on the mercenary's features as Val squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, a bullet pinging off the reinforced helmet, a shot that would stun like being smacked with a hammer to the skull. But there was no getting up from the third shot as it tore through the carotid artery, the air suddenly sharp with the coppery tang of blood and death.
Crack!
Val rolled and dodged behind another thick trunk as a bullet streaked by, leaves rustling calmly above as predators fought for survival below.
"Nice shot, Valor! I'm impressed! You'd think two years riding the cushy disability train, high to the gills on the sweetest drugs money can buy, would have softened your edge. But no! My man Val. Always a challenge."
But Val was already turning and sprinting ever deeper into cover, sensing another player he desperately wished would leave, yet knowing he would stay.
Very well. Val would do what he could to better the odds.
"Doubling back? Hoping to flee? Oh dear, Nightfox, I thought you knew better! But wait, this forest is only a couple football fields in diameter! Thick as the dickens, with trees any rich business tycoon would be proud to say qualifies for country, while still being a hop away from the train station and all the delights of Chicago proper. Am I right, Val? Wonderful for nature walks, not so useful for avoiding death."
More laughter, with an edge of mania. Jacob sounded wired to the gills. Hard on his teeth, but it would only heighten his edge.
"Do you even know what this is about, Val old buddy? Well? do you?"
Val said not a word.
"Conquest, Val! And more money than you could shake a stick at! My new employer values his employees, and pays in Krugerrands! Thirty untraceable coins of solid gold per month! A gold coin a day. Standard mercenary fee, where he's from, a place where the mighty rule and the weak know their place. A place with technology beyond your wildest dreams! And that's not all. But you know all that already, don't you, Val? Endless. Exultius. You've played the games, you've explored that world! It's why my boss told me to let you live, after Dominic dropped the ball. You turned out to be surprisingly useful! Or were. But times change. Plans change. The invasion's coming, Val, and you're on the wrong side! Soon Earth's leaders will be bowing to their new masters, and with the discovery of living dwarves... well, Val, our mutual employer has decided to clean the board of all non-essentials!"
His chuckle turned cruel. "Sorry about your friends, Val, they're probably already dead. No loose ends, you understand. Pretty pieces of ass you and the captain had there, one for each, am I right? And Chris
, he's the fifth, right? Who's he fucking? That's right, every chick on base. It would have been easy to take him out days ago if the boss man had given me a head's up, but no! Everything's coming to a head tonight! Tell me, Val, did you actually see a dwarf? Are they like hobbits?"
Val let the words wash over him, grateful his enemy was allowing him to triangulate his location by sound, Jacob alone invisible to his mind's eye. The others he sensed plodding carefully through the trees, each trying to ambush the other.
And Val only heartbeats away from being pinned and killed.
And never had he felt so in tune with the darkness all around, and the flood of energy just beneath the fabric of reality. Buried deep, so different from Jordia, but there.
In all its impossible, beautiful glory.
Duck!
His prey had sensed something, a heartbeat before Val was ready to strike. Already nervous, perhaps, from all his friends dying so quickly, he was turning and spraying almost before Val dropped to the ground, feeling calm in the terror as the hot muzzle turned ever closer to him, Val coolly squeezing his trigger, making every shot count, the onslaught lurching his foe back with three shots to the solar plexus, stunning even through the reinforced kevlar. Val waited half a heartbeat for his target to lurch back and crack!
A fierce jolt of satisfaction as the final bullet slipped between helm and body armor, his foe gurgling out a hideous cry as his clear faceplate turned crimson with gobs of choking blood.
Exhilaration that instantly turned to terror as he glimpsed a figure manifesting like a specter of death, the one piece on the board he could not sense, flowing out of the darkness behind Val's final victim, sniper rifle aimed straight for his heart.
Mocking laughter as Val squeezed his trigger to a dry click.
"Well damn, Val, isn't this just the funniest turn of events? And you got all four of my guys. Most of them were pros, too. Well done, Nightfox. Pity things couldn't have been different, but between the half-million bounty on the head of every former squad mate save yours truly, courtesy of a number of very rich, very influential drug lords, how could I resist earning immunity by taking you all out?" He flashed a cold smile, his dead eyes those of a man long gone to so many vices. But he was no less deadly for it, as the rifle aimed at Val's heart bespoke so well.
Val smiled back. "I agree, the bounty will be sweet indeed. Now!" he screamed for all he was worth, rolling in the split second it took his enemy to spin reflexively around, Val understanding instantly the calculations in his enemy's mind.
Val was unarmed, no threat. If it was a bluff, flinching would be an inconvenience. If a genuine threat? Not reacting would be death. So Jacob turned in that split second. But fast as Val was, Jacob's bullet was already cracking the ground where Val had lain prone just a split second ago as Val jerked himself upright behind one of the few oaks in that nook of woodland, his heart hammering with exhilaration and terror when Jacob roared.
"You're unarmed, fool! You think I don't know that? You think I can't ghost these woods just as well as you? You're fucking dead, Val. I can sense you even now!"
And when Jacob raced for Val's spot behind the tree, Val skirted around again, forcing a furious Jacob to close. And when the extended length barrel jammed into Val's view a split second before Jacob, Val was ready, his hand snaking out, yanking it close as he pivoted his hip and jerked, both hands now on the barrel and tearing it free of his enemy's hands.
Jacob roared, disarmed but no fool, closing before Val could use it in turn, charging with a knee to Val's gut he rolled with even as he slammed the butt against Jacob's faceplate before letting go of the gun altogether in favor of clamping both hands around the protective helmet. "Hai!" Val shouted as he twisted and crunched, desperate to snap Jacob's neck with one furious twist, instead coming off with the helmet and a blinding flash of pain to his ear for his troubles, both of them having dropped the poorly suited sniper rifle for the use of their fists.
Jacob snarled, eyes filled with hideous hate, slamming Val's left cheek with an elbow as Val countered with a knee strike which did damn little against Jacob's Kevlar body armor.
A jab and a cross hammered Val's cheek, and he spat out blood before replying with a lightning fast hook that rocked Jacob back, leaving him open for the spinning backfist cracking against his jaw, Jacob spitting out several teeth as Val tore into him with a series of tight hooks and elbow slashes, forcing his enemy back before Jacob's roundhouse kick cracked against Val's side.
Jacob's bloody broken smile widened. "Yes, Val! Yes! Show me how you fight. Show me how you kill! Our fists and feet, you fucking coward, too chickenshit to admit reporting me when that bitch was no friend of ours. No one else cared, Val. Her pussy was hot and sweet, and damn if her eyes didn't bulge when she begged for air!"
Val's eyes widened with surprise and horror. Jacob laughed. "Yeah, Val, she couldn't have been more than eighteen. Just beginning to trick, enslaved to the very shit Yancey was having us firebomb out of existence. She was a plant, fool. A mole! Of course she had to die! But not before I took her, and goddamn did she ride me hard before I choked the fucking life out of her!"
Val's fury turned to something dark and terrible, all of reality crashing down to nothing more than this moment, facing this horror wearing human flesh.
A hideous abomination that must die.
And Jacob sensed it, eyes widening with the first stirrings of fear underneath his rage. "Fuck this and fuck you, Val. Time for you to die!"
Even as he said the words, Val was racing forward, palm strike smashing right elbow as his enemy reached for the holdout knife Jacob thought himself fast enough to unsheathe before Val countered, but Val was already stepping past.
Pivoting around Jacob.
Hands slipping into a Hadaka jime, Val wrenched his enemy by the throat, twisting him around in a furious throw, a struggling Jacob flipping over him as he yanked and twisted, forcing massive torque against Jacob's spine. When Jacob's body finished cartwheeling over him, Val felt the crack of a snapped neck like a gunshot, too high on fear and fury to feel the agony of his own wrenched back, having broken so many rules with his unorthodox throw, but it didn't matter.
All that mattered was looking into the frantically blinking eyes of his enemy, tasting his terror and agony as Jacob slowly suffocated, unable to breathe, Val's ice cold eyes boring into Jacob's own as the man's agony went beyond mere pain, sinking at last into oblivion as his brain screamed for air that never came.
And it was over.
It was done.
A monster who had preyed upon desperate girls and men foolish enough to call him brother was dead.
Congratulations! You have completed the hidden quest: Who Wants My Head? Defeating the very nemesis responsible for killing half your old crew! Experience earned!
Val gasped in disbelief as the words rang through his skull. The same smug voice that seemed to echo his own subconscious in Jordia. Speaking to him here. In this world.
Val took a shuddering breath as exhilaration was replaced with shock, awe, even fear, the agony of his bicep and wrenched back, completely muted in the heat of combat, now washing over him in a sudden flood.
Congratulations, you have leveled up! As you are not on the verge of death or battle, you feel sleep calling to you like never before, your soul eager to blossom ever closer to its true form! Some people fear sleep, afraid they might waken as an entirely different person joined only by common memory. In your case, this might actually be true. Enjoy your rest! (It's not like you have a choice.)
He winced and cursed as exhaustion suddenly roared through him, knowing he had to sleep, understanding what it meant.
"Fox to Falcon! Are you clear?"
An odd whistle. That of a bird of prey. Val's face lit with relief, thinking he understood.
His father was safe, they would meet back at base. Which was either home, or the car. For all Val knew, enemies waited still. He'd proceed carefully to the car, hopefully catch sigh
t of his father and avoid any prey heading their way.
Not being a fool, Val quickly kitted up in Jacob's armor, taking his rifle as well.
"Hope you're rotting somewhere hot, bastard," Val muttered, though he couldn't help admiring the SSR MK 20 at his feet, complete with suppressor, which was the only reason why the barrel had been long enough for him to grip and disarm the way he had. Still, for what might come next, it was useful enough.
With those thoughts Val made his way through the forest, feeling his post-battle rush fade, giving himself a moment to let the shakes pass. Deep breaths. He was alive. His father was alive. His foes were dead. That was all that mattered.
He repeated the mantra five times and felt ready to continue, finally merging his sense of self with the woods once more just before he broke cover. He whistled once, a short little trill his father had taught him long ago. If his father was armed and saw a fellow gunman with sights aimed at their abandoned vehicle, hopefully he'd check before he shot.
No one. Neither friend nor foe.
Val cautiously circled at the periphery of the woods, eyeballing the van his enemies rode in on.
Abandoned. Jacob had brought out his full crew. But still. There. Val gave a bleak smile, recognizing the signs when he looked under both vehicles.
Both rigged to detonate, cleaning Jacob's mess for him if Val had doubled back to flee.
Perception check made! Val forced weary eyes wide open, the shadows at last coalescing, sensing tragedy only heartbeats away.
"Dad, get back! It's rigged to explode!" Val swallowed his suddenly dry throat as weaving shadows became the inky outline of tree branches in moonlight once more. Seconds later he felt more than heard a presence, slowly turning to give no alarm as a figure in Kevlar with an HK 416 held comfortably in hand tapped his faceplate, lifting the visor.
His father's relieved smile mirrored his own. "It's good to see you, son."
Val gave an exhausted chuckle, wincing and fighting off spasms as he fought to rise.
"Val?" Voice laced with bravado no longer, his father was there, methodically checking for injuries, hissing when he saw Val's arm.
Endless Online: Oblivion's Price: A LitRPG Adventure - Book 3 Page 38
