“Where’s…Where’s the guy who just shot at you?” he said, sliding partially into the frigid water again to push back the nausea. He figured he was over thirty-nine seconds now and the suffering just kept intensifying.

“North by northeast about fifty meters.”

That gave him a good idea of her relative position.

“Okay. You have—”

He vomited violently, trying unsuccessfully to do it quietly.

“Jon? Jon? Are you there?”

“Yeah. You have another one coming in on you from…Wait. No. He heard me. He’s turning my way.”

“Can you handle him?”

“No,” he said, struggling to pull up the military simulation application. It became impossible to keep his head up and his face went down in the mud. Was he breathing? He couldn’t tell anymore.

The muffled sound of gunfire filtered through to him but he ignored it, concentrating on activating the training exercise system. It hesitated a few seconds but then launched, making him the default exercise leader.

According to the overhead, the man was bearing down on him fast while the other held his position looking for a line on Randi.

Smith tried to slide farther into the water, but couldn’t control his body anymore. How long had it been. A minute? More? Could he die from doing this? Would he even care at this point?

The approaching man slowed and he heard a garbled voice—undoubtedly he was calling to his companion, confused as to what he was doing stopped by the streambank and the erratic output of his unit.

“Randi…On my mark, break cover and go straight at the guy shooting at you. Then turn west and keep going full speed. You’ll run right into the guy coming my way.”

“Are you nuts?” came her unsurprising reply. “I’ve already been grazed once. I can’t—

“Do what I say!” he choked out as he highlighted both the men’s icons and told the network that they’d been killed in the exercise. Their Merges temporarily blinded and deafened them to simulate their deaths.

“Now! Go!”

Randi Russell heard, but didn’t comply. Smith sounded completely out of it and the bastard tracking her would be incapable of missing the kind of target he was asking her to present.

“Go!” he shouted again and this time she did, taking a leap of faith into the open. She ran full-speed in the direction of the shooter, teeth grinding against each other as she waited for the inevitable round that would kill her.

Instead, she found the shooter on his knees reaching desperately for something behind him on his belt. Figuring that there was no point in looking a gift horse in the mouth, she fired two rounds center of mass and another into the man’s face as she passed. Smith had once again pulled a rabbit from his hat.