File 5.6 - Childish Games

Several ARMs remained standing. The terrain was in their favor. They had high ground and rocky cliffs for cover. Matters were only made worse by the fact they had pillboxes and artillery fixed at the nearby ridge overlooking the position. A well defended position. They already made it difficult for him to reach the ground that he did.

The warning screens continued to run off on the right side of the monitor. It remained in his sight, annoying him. It just kept telling him that he no longer had a left arm and a malfunctioning right leg. Plus, half the cameras were damaged or destroyed. So he only had scattered visibility on the spherical monitor. Gray static was the color of the day. An annoying color to be sure.

“Time tah charge tha line!” shouted Edgar. He grabbed a hold of the control sticks. His fingers tapped along the buttons lining the stick. Manipulating the speed with his feet pedals, he threw the machine forward into the hail of bullets, shells and particle beams.

Warning screens started popping in front of his screen. A display of the Od appeared with the computer highlighting the newest damaged part. It was only a second before the computer corrected the information to say it was destroyed. “Damn!” Yellow and red lights flew up faster than Ed could read. His vision continued to reduce until he lost his head. All the monitors went black. “Yeah, yeah, up w’th it alre’dy!”

MISSION FAILED

The text displayed across the full monitor in giant red bold font. Ed slumped in his harness, the belts preventing much movement. “Like I care! Whatever…” He threw the sticks forward making them rock a little before tossing his hands under his arms. The scoring, damage and kills displayed on the screen. He received a failing grade of “F” for his performance. “Get meh outta h’re alre’dy!”

A white seam appeared in the monitor drawing up from the bottom reaching out to the top. It turned to blinding light. Hissing of machinery escaped the cuts as the two hemispheres drew further apart. Stairs pushed in from outside granting a way down.

Ed tapped insistently on the harness demanding its release. Eventually, he heard the dull click in his back. Freed, he stood up first to pull his hair back out of his face. He stepped down out of the simulator. Sweat stuck to his body making the room even more uncomfortable than it was to start.

A scowl immediately formed on his face the moment he saw his instructor’s disappointed expression. He hardly cared about the man’s interest in his combat performance. The sour taste of the whole place still lingered in his mouth. He couldn’t forget Shizuka.

Sitting down in the lone chair in the room, he tilted his head up to look at the man standing over him. “What?”

“Petty Officer! That was a worse performance than your last simulation!” The man before him was his orientation officer and instructor, Lieutenant Richard Dolms.

Nonchalantly, Ed rolled back in his chair almost letting his butt slide off. “So it was, Dick.” Ed just liked calling him Dick, because it seemed to fit, rather Lieutenant Dick to be proper. It also made Ed’s day each time he got to see the stiff-ass Lieutenant get flustered and flip through his papers as though he was looking for something. Like he was at the moment. “Oh sorry, sir. Lieutenant Dick.” The red in his face finally appeared. Ed smirked with sadistic glee.

Struggling very hard from blowing up, Richard flipped through the papers faster. “I could have you thrown in the brig for insubordination!”

Curious, Ed raised an eyebrow. “Fer what? It’s yer name.” He lifted himself back in the seat a little. “Thought ya mil’tary types w’re ‘spose tah be more disciplined. Losin’ yer cool o’er a name.”

He barely had much of a retort left for Ed after pointing all of it out. His fingers flipped through papers faster, unable to do anything. Richard stewed in silence. “Your next simulation starts in thirty minutes. I hope you remember tactics better next time.”

Ed clicked his tongue. “What’s it mat’er, jes a game.” The response failed to get any more out of Dick. An end to the more interesting game, left Ed with little to focus on. He pulled out his comm. device and started flipping through the topics on the news. Nothing looked interesting to him until a new story popped up on the list at the top displacing many of the stories with companion articles. ‘Terrorist bombin’?’

The first and only guess he had was that it was Ragnarok, the known terrorist group linked to numerous bombings throughout the world under their twisted belief that it was leading the lost back to heaven, or some such nonsense. ‘Ragnarok…Antarctica City?!’ He stood up to look around. The other assistants in lab coats seemed to stop moving as well.

News spread fast.

He stepped outside needing to breathe for a moment. The more he read in the article the grimmer the picture got. ‘Thousands dead…even more injured… The hell’s wrong w’th ‘em!’ A shaking developed in his hand blurring the screen a little. The sound of his heartbeat rang clear in his ears. His body started sweating even more thinking about it.

A loud beep went off from his hand. Each sound seemed amplified for him. It was too loud. Ed looked down to see he had a new message. He tapped the screen feeling an odd sense of dread. His eyes stared for a moment before he dropped the comm. and broke down the hall in full run.

Left behind on the floor, his comm. remained on the message.

SENDER: UNKNOWN

Room 213, HOPE Military Hospital