Ceo


    Main Bunker, War Room


    00:50, August 4th


    I stood at my spot near my desk as all the Majors of Vost Dor filled into the officer bunker. When the last Major came in, Forthelols. The door was closed.


    “Thank you for heeding my call, considering recent events and not being able to log out. I want to thank you all for remaining calm.” I told the Majors, everybody nodded. “Let''s get down to business now. Shall we talk about the reason I called you all here.”


    Everybody else remained silent and I continued. “The first thing we need to discuss is what''s literally happening right now.”


    Jjvillage responded first, “we’re still in the game and we can’t access our menus to leave.” He shot off.


    “From what I can tell, yes we’re still in the game but something tells me we aren’t.” I said.


    “What makes you say that?” Jjvillage asked, uncomfortably looking around.


    I looked around silently asking ‘is he serious?’ But I answered anyway, “As we all know, Pordier at War has an extremely advanced Physics, and Chemistry system. Pretty much could simulate weather, and the human body, with how it reacts to everything.” I explained he nodded at that and I continued. “But it couldn’t simulate smell, while it ignored how cold or hot it felt to someone.” He nodded once more, remaining silent.


    “Yet when the game was supposed to shutdown we weren’t kicked back to either the real world or back to the Home Screen like if you tried to boot up the game without sufficient Nanite in you. But we remained in a sense in the game, then we all smelled blood and then gunpowder. Followed by it being cold. Which leads me to believe we aren’t in the game anymore.” I explained.


    Jjvillage responded, “But what if they pushed back the shutdown? And we’re still in the game?”


    “Certainly a possibility, but I can’t see why they would push back the schedule, especially since they declared bankruptcy and the studio had to sell off all of their assets. Or if they did, why wouldn’t they tell us that the shutdown was pushed back to another date? Even then that doesn’t explain why we have the ability to smell now.” I responded.


    Jjvillage didn’t respond simply standing there, but Shark was the next to speak “maybe we missed the message that shutdown was pushed back, or maybe the shutdown was actually a new update in disguise and they decided to add smell. Right guys?” He asked, chuckling nervously.


    Some shook their heads, others nodded to his explanation.


    Fishman was the first to rebuke “If it is a new update then why did they remove the ability to access the menu or Home Screen?”


    Village responded immediately, with a thin veil of calmness “maybe it’s a new gesture that is required to open it? And as I said we probably missed the announcement that it’s an update explaining the changes.” Village responded, and the same people from before agreed with him.


    Fishman responded “How could we have miss-“


    “YOU DON’T KNOW IF YOU MISSED THE ANNOUNCEMENT, I DON’T KNOW IF I MISSED THE ANNOUNCEMENT AS I SAID BEFORE THEY PROBABLY CHANGED THE GESTURE FOR OPENING UP THE MENU AND HOME SCREEN.”  He said desperately.


    I attempted to rein in the argument “Alright how-“ I was cut off as yelling began.


    “What do you mean by that!” Fishman responded with a hint of barely contained anger.


    But Jjvillage responded with the same thing rehashed in a different manner, as shouts started soon after. All the Majors who were calmly discussing strategy, politely arguing about why their plan won’t work and how their plan worked. All less than 3 hours earlier.


    “Ok, how about-“ Another bout of yelling interrupted me.


    I attempted to reign in the arguing officers for 10 minutes straight, but to no avail. As I eventually resigned myself to simply letting them exhaust themselves, it was loud, nauseating even, but I didn’t know what to do either.


    The arguing and childish bickering continued for another half an hour, between the two groups that had clearly formed. I didn’t need to look that deep into this argument to know what their beliefs were.


    The denialists and the acceptors. The former are ones who believe they are in the game, and the latter who believe this is reality.


    I was leaning towards this as reality, but a small part of me wanted this to be the game or even a dream, that I had passed out the moment the game had shut down. Even then this screaming match was starting to get annoying and it felt like my eardrums were going to rupture.


    I placed my hand on my pistol grip, pulled it out of its holster, checked if it was loaded, and pointed it towards the ceiling.


    I covered my new Kyntari cat ears as my human ears were gone. I pulled the trigger. Immediately after, my ears were ringing from the shot, and my firing hand was forced down by the recoil. They were shaking. It was a lot more powerful than I remembered.


    This got the desired result, as everybody grabbed their ears in response to the extremely loud noise next to them.  My ears were still ringing, but the sound was quickly disappearing.


    When the ringing had settled down I spoke.


    “I know we’re scared, and confused. But this isn’t the time to argue about whether we’re in a game or not. We’re still here, so let’s discuss what we’re going to do now.” I said, everybody looked at me, at each other.


    “The first order of business is to figure out what we have and what we’re going to do.” I looked around, and the rumbling of stomachs easily told us what the first order of business was. “It seems like our first order of business is finding food.” I said.


    I immediately started formulating a plan of what we''re going to do.


    “Fishman and Jack split your men up to start searching for any sources of food outside.” The two nodded in response.


    “Memes have your Engineers begin requesting players to share what they have in their personal inventories assuming they placed anything down, specifically food inside. Jjvillage have your men help Memes men, while Buzzsaw have your men help Fishmans’ men, Silenz have your men help Jacks. The rest of you have your men cooperate with Memes’ men, and help search for food.” I said, everybody nodded in response.


    “If there''s nothing else you wish to discuss, you are free to leave.” Everybody left the door quietly discussing their own plan of action.


    Moments later ten floating papers with orders appeared in front of me.


    Satisfied, I left the War Room and went to the closest exit in which four people were at, “Y’all are quick.” I said.


    The players turned to face me, ”Well I want out of this bunker, it''s very cramped in here.” One of them said.


    “Alright, open the door.” I said.


    The one closest to the door nodded, and began to spin the wheel and with a pull the door was pushed open by rushing air. Snow flew in, covering everything in the foyer with snow including me. The wind speeds reminded me of being on an EVA on the outer hull of the Colony on Venus, but way weaker.


    The incandescent light shone dimly to the outside, the outside was pitch black. The players closed the door and locked it.


    “It looks like… we’ll have to… wait for morning.” One of them said between breaths.


    “Alright. Get one of the Majors to wake me when the blizzard stops. I suggest y’all get some sleep while we wait.” I said, returning to the war room. I then went into my room, which was split into two parts: a restroom which probably doesn’t work, and a bed with a standing closet on the other side of the room.


    I took off my trench coat, it was covered in snow which was quickly melting. Then my boots I didn’t like going to sleep without taking a shower but there''s no water to wash with. Then I put down my SMG, Sword, spellbook, and clipboard. I then laid down on my bed, and just closed my eyes for what felt like forever…


    ……..


    05:54 hours


    “Colonel? Wake up!” I heard someone knocking on the door. I opened my eyes and groggily rolled off the bed with a thud, the ceiling light blinded me.


    “Colonel! You good?” They exclaimed.


    “Coming!” I groggily yelled as I stumbled to the door. Opening it I was greeted by Major Fishman. “What is it?” I asked harshly.


    “Um, you asked us to wake you when the blizzard stopped, and has.”


    “Oh… give me a minute.” I said, closing the door I dragged myself to my boots which were dry now, putting them on, next was my coat. I went back to the door into the War Room.


    “Here.” I groggily said, I stretched out and gave a yawn. “Tell me what is happening, are we good to get out?” I asked.


    If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    “No, the doors are blocked in by snow, and there is a lot of snow.”


    “How much exactly?” I asked.


    “I think it''s better to show you.” Fish said.


    We left the war room, and to our left were several engineers. I heard shovels digging into snow, and the clanging of the snow on metal.


    “Where are y’all moving the snow? It''s small in the foyer area, and I don’t see any snow or water around here in the hallway.” I said.


    “Currently the engineers are throwing the snow down the stairway into the tunnels.”


    All three steel doors were open, the engineers moved a lot of snow out of the door frame, then a bunch of snow fell in a mini avalanche. They then pushed the snow down the stairs creating a cacophony of sounds as the snow went down the stairs for brief moments.


    I walked around behind the engineers getting a look into the stairwell, a singular incandescent light barely lit the stairway, there I saw a small build up of snow on the steps.


    One of the engineers turned to face me then towards the door, a female Kyntari. “If we keep this up long enough, we’ll be able to slide down to the tunnels.” She said, then getting back to work.


    “If we decide to continue down this way.” I said to her, I then turned to Fish. “Have we tried anything else?” I asked.


    “No, not yet. Do you have anything in mind?”


    “I do, we could use a flamethrower, or an AT rifle. Melt the snow directly instead of digging our way out.” I suggested.


    “We could try that, but the only flamethrower we have in the tunnel is a kid who only speaks Japanese. Even then I don’t like the possibility of igniting a fire here, even then we’ve been getting unusually hard pieces of ice that I doubt we could melt with a flamethrower. We could try an AT rifle first.”


    “So you are willing to fire a handheld artillery gun, but not a flamethrower?” I said.


    “Well, if you think a flamethrower is better you are more than welcome to try it.”


    “Eh, it''s been a while since I last fired an AT rifle, and I want to be the one that fires it.” I said.


    “Alright, that works. Just don’t hurt yourself.” Fish turned to a soldier who was watching with us. “Can you get us an AT gun?”


    The soldier nodded, and then left.


    “Those pieces of hard ice, can you show me them?” I asked.


    “Well we’ll have to wait a bit, every once in a while a big chunk of ice comes from snow with the removal of the snow.” A moment later a shovel had hit something hard with a notable loud ding. Which meant either the shovels aregood, and no cracks were in them, or it was whatever the shovel head hit.


    “We found another ice chunk!” The engineer who was digging said, at that moment  the soldier who was sent to get an AT rifle for me had returned. The other engineers gave a noticeable annoyed sigh, they then got up and started to help the digging engineer.


    “Thank you.” I said, I grabbed the red glowing rifle and strapped it around my back. I caught glimpses of the ice they were talking about and dealing with. They attempted to dig it out for a moment, but the constant hitting of the metal shovel heads on the ice was the only thing that could be heard.


    The engineers stopped trying to dig out, realizing as I did the ice chunk was bigger than the door frame.


    I approached the door “Can I get a look at the ice y’all were trying to remove?” I asked.


    “Not like we can do anything else with it.” The female engineer from before said.


    They stepped out of the way for me, and I approached the door frame, the ‘ice’ was white. “White ice?” I mumbled to myself, I wasn’t particularly familiar with water ice but solid nitrogen which was white, it is commonly used as rocket fuel due to its energy density, but that is gauche nitrogen, which is high pressure high temperature.


    Though that didn’t explain why it was so hard, solid nitrogens density was less than a gram per cubic centimeter which meant that the shovel would’ve just gone through it like water yet it was like water ice. Though the ice could also be something else I wasn’t familiar with.


    If it was solid nitrogen it shouldn’t be here, as it would’ve evaporated at earth atmospheric pressure, or we would be dead because it would’ve exploded by now due to a sudden depressurization, due to it not being properly sealed. I decided to simply touch the white ice, to see how cold it felt, it felt the same temperature as the snow, meaning it was the temperature of the air maybe a bit off. Yet I didn’t feel any liquid water on my hand, looking at the spot I touched nothing changed about it.


    I sighed, “oh, lord.” I mumbled to myself.


    “Is everything alright?” Fish asked.


    I turned to face Fishman and said “I don’t know.”


    “What do you mean?”


    “I don’t know if we are alright, I can’t tell if this is just normal water ice, something different or solid nitrogen. Which shouldn’t be forming at these temperatures or pressures. Or I might just be over thinking things.” I said.


    “So are you going to shoot the ice block now?” Fish asked.


    “Better than standing around theorizing about the existence of solid nitrogen existing in human conditions.” I grabbed my AT rifle from my shoulder, “I suggest y’all close the door, don’t know how it will work, but I’d rather have 1 person injured than a lot of people injured.” I said.


    Fishman nodded, “Alright, we’ll have a medic on standby to check on you after you’ve fired the gun.” Fish said.


    “Everybody get out of the room, digging time is over.” I said.


    The engineers quickly got out of the room, and I closed the tunnel door. Though not a good idea, I needed to direct the pressure out of the bunker. I might die, but that''s a risk I am willing to take.


    I got low to the ground, made myself a tiny little snow fort. A simple snow wall will provide some protection.


    I brought out the AT rifle, aimed the iron sights to the center of the door frame, where the weird ice chunk was. I pulled the trigger, and nothing happened, no magic circle or anything really, I pulled and held the trigger, nothing. “Maybe I need something more than pulling the trigger.” I looked at the glowing piece that always steamed after firing. It was an over glorified lantern right now, and I needed it to make a magic circle.


    I looked at the trigger and handle, there I saw simple neural receptors, essentially buttons that can receive electrical signals from the brain and nervous system. They are usually used in where directly interfacing with something isn’t advised, or in the usage of brain dances receiving information from someone else essentially telepathically.


    I adjusted my fingers to be on them, and I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened again, “maybe it requires more than just live muscle information.” I said to myself, I decided to simply imagine the AT gun charging up and at that moment I heard the recognisable terrifying low drone of an AT gun start. A brand new red light source appeared at the end of the gun''s barrel, a magic circle which spun faster and faster for several seconds then it fired.


    An explosion rang out, my ears rang, my eyes were assaulted with brilliant red light. My ears rang loudly, through over exerted eyes I saw the ice chunk quickly release energy into the surrounding area. I felt warmer than usual, I saw the snow wall melt into water. It was a mistake to shoot that piece of ice with a handheld artillery gun. I thought as I tried to stay awake, but a few breaths later that tiredness went away and my ears though they were still ringing loudly I could hear the thudding of the steel door, I turned around and saw it swing open with several people coming out. It was Major Fish, I think it was.


    “Colonel!” I heard someone say through damaged ear drums.


    “She looked like she was suffocating.” A medic said, he raised a finger, “Can you track my finger?” He said.


    “Yeah.” I mumbled, the medic moved his finger left and right over me.


    “Good, you seem to be awake. How do you feel?” The medic asked.


    “I feel like a bomb just set off right next to me. My ears are ringing, I feel like I went through sudden changes in pressure. Along with nitrogen asphyxiation.” I mumbled.


    “Well we believe a bomb did set off right next to you. Well your ascertain seems correct, as I see signs of all of that over you, plus second degree burns on your face.” The medic said.


    “Fuck… I don’t think you have access to plastic surgery do you?” I mumbled to him.


    “No, but I have been curious how the healing syringes work.” The medic said.


    “Go ahead.” I feel more tired now.


    The medic brought out a syringe with an alcohol wipe. Disinfected a spot on my left arm, and then put the syringe in. A moment later the ringing stopped, I no longer felt like I was thrown through a vacuum chamber and a bomb went off next to me.


    I shot up, I was in the hallway, the medic was still next to me. “How long was I out?” I asked.


    “Less than a minute or so.” The medic answered, I looked at his hand, the syringe still in his hand. Then to the door several people were at it.


    “Well that checks out.” I said, getting on my feet, I wobbled a bit.


    “Well it looks like the healing solution isn’t perfect and can only deal with injuries but it seems more than good enough. Certainly better than spending weeks recovering in a bed.”


    “That''s good.” I said, looking at the exit, several dozen others were also waiting in the hallway. I pushed my way past several people back into the Foyer, there I found Fishman also at the front door.


    “So what''s happening right now?” I asked. The entire place was a mess, for one the door to the tunnel was slightly bent, two the concrete walls were scorched and cracked with exposed rebar, the incandescent light was just gone and the outer door was lodged into the wall quite literally blown to bits.


    “Well we got out that''s for sure, and also that ice that blocked us in. I ordered the engineers to gather as much as possible, I thought you’d be interested to research it more.” Fish said.


    “What do you mean as much as possible, shouldn’t most of it be gone?” I asked.


    “No it''s not gone, there is still more on the other entrance and the gun emplacements on the front.” Fish said.


    “Alright, tell them to be careful when receiving samples. It''s violently explosive, though not as much as I thought.” I turned to the exit, “come on let''s check out the outside.” I said.


    We went outside and were met with a trenchline cleared of snow up to about 20 feet, looking up I saw the sky starting to become red at where the horizon was, and all the way up and to the opposite direction was pure black.


    I climbed up out of the trenchline, the snow was up to my knees. Several dead bodies'' hands were sticking out, likely thrown around by the explosion. Looking around at the rest of the surrounding area I wasn’t met with muddy snow mixed with some blood, covered by thousands of dead bodies as I had expected. Instead, it was pure white snow, the only signs that there were trench lines were the height differences that the trench lines made. Like puddles on a street corner.


    The pillboxes that lined the trenchline lower on the hill were still standing, partially cracked.


    There were the tanks that were used on the last offensive before the ceasefire, some were destroyed, and others in working condition. The treads were buried in snow, which was probably up to the knees, while the barrels and turrets were sticking out as snow covered them.


    Artillery, field guns, machine gun nests, were all buried. The barbed wire laid around was barely sticking above the snow.


    Then there was the Broken Wall, or the lack of the Broken Wall in its place was a river. A wide one at that, frozen over with the proper look of water ice.


    “Where''s the Broken Wall.” Fish asked.


    I looked around some more, a large green forest was behind the hill the bunker was located on. Several miles away from that, was a circular wall, one that surrounded us.


    “Well I think I found the answer to our question, but I don’t think the implication of the changes is a good sign for us.” I said.


    “Yeah, I see the wall. Now what?” Fish asked.


    “Simple we continue the plan.”