“Um goodnight.”

Alan stepped outside, grabbing the jacket. He’d never stood guard before. How hard could it be?

***

Over the next few hours the only enemy Alan had to fight off was boredom, and that was easily solved by having Eve go through her database and give him tips on how to be a proper sniper. To his surprise, a lot of the information came easily, even naturally. Probably because of the ability he'd purchased.

Around 8 a.m., when Alan began wondering if they were going to include him in their discussion, or if he was left outside purposefully, Aphrodite stepped out of the bunker, stopping right in front of Alan, a bit too close for his comfort. She smelled nice, with a faint scent of lilac. The Game didn’t require regular showers or hygiene maintenance, but Alan could see the appeal in a sense of cleanliness.

“You can go down now. I’ll take over from here.” Aphrodite smiled dazzlingly.

“Um, alright, thanks,” Alan replied, stepping down the stairs a bit awkwardly.

Thiago had Alan examine the shield generator first. Not wanting to anger the rest of the group, Alan did so. He noted that he had never elected Thiago leader, but kept silent.

It turned out that, according to Eve at least, the shield generator had a malfunctioning part. It was determined that Alan would head off downtown with Daisy and Ace to try to find a replacement part and buy whatever else seemed useful.

Daisy was coming along because it was her shield generator, and she needed to buy the part to fix it according to the Administrator, while Ace apparently had connections with the US military, who were supposedly in control of the city. He would also act as their bodyguard. Everyone else would be sent out in rotating pairs, scouting out nearby landmarks, gathering information and guarding the base. Aphrodite with Thiago, DaLong with Kitana and MadMerlin with KingArthur.

***

An hour later, after a brisk walk from the base, Alan found himself approaching downtown San Francisco. They hadn’t encountered any enemies on the way there, though traffic seemed to pick up as they reached downtown. A few cars raced by on the roads every so often, and there were other people walking about, mostly in military fatigues. Eve pointed out a few possible sniper nests in the skyscrapers and office buildings. Eve confirmed some of them contained actual snipers. How she could tell, Alan had no idea.

To get downtown there was a security checkpoint, but it didn’t seem very restrictive. Once Ace let the guards know they were undergoing the Tutorial they were waved past without anyone even checking their weapons. As they neared the downtown mall and the crowds began to swell to the hundreds, Alan started to worry that it might end up looking like a normal mall. He needn’t have worried, however. The transformation was glorious.

Gone were the clothing shops, filled with designer jeans or cute dresses. In their place stood armor of all shapes and sizes, sleek laser weapons and giant metal swords. There were stores that sold implants that promised to turn you into a mighty warrior or master spy, robotics stores with bots that could aid you in battle or repair your gear, and information brokers with info about the hottest war zones or best quests. There was even a small space ship dealership, though the cheapest ship was hundreds of thousands of credits.