Just Out of Reach
This is a story about how me and a friend were playing a game, and things went wrong, in a way that we never expected.
Just within Grasp
"Hey, Kira, I'm bored," James told me. "Why don't we play some Reach?"
"Sure, James. We haven't played it for a while," I said, glad of the break from boredom. "How about infection?"
"Eh, sure, why not," James says. "It's not my favorite mode, but it's something to do."
"Come on, just because I'm awesome at it," I gloat, and tease. "Doesn't mean you can mope!"
James chuckles, and shakes his head.
We start the game, and get a good position on the upper levels of the map Sword Base, before we slowly end up as the last survivors left in the game, everyone rushing at us.
We decide to do something gutsy.
We leap from our position, pistols blazing, gunning down around seven of them, as we fall, hitting the gravity lift at the bottom, breaking our fall, and allowing us to land by the door that you use to enter in the campaign.
It was wide open, which shocked both of us, to a degree.
"James, do you see what I see?" I say to my friend. "Let's go! Never miss a glitch!"
"Kira, wait!" James warns. "Remember how we ended up falling for a while until the match ended, last time?"
"Whatever Jim-boy, let's just do it!" I say, awaiting adventure. "This might be great, or we'll fall! I don't care!"
"Why the hell do you love glitches so-" James wipes his face with his hand. "Screw it, let's go."
We jumped away from our little hold out, not even having noticed that all the zombies we had been fighting had vanished when the door had been found.
If only we had seen, we could have stopped.
Losing Grip
As we went along, down the halls of the campaign, I was ecstatic!
"James, this is the actual level from the campaign, but wide open!" I said. "Look, the elevator is open, too!"
"An elevator, so exciting," James says. "Look, the creepy maintenance stair is open too. You wanna take it?"
"What? Oh, it is!" I realized. "Okay, yeah, we'll split. You take the elevator, I'll take the stairs."
I moved into the stairs, as his elevator's doors closed, and noticed that the stair was the one from the damaged Sword Base, which I expected, due to the developers never having had designed an unbroken stairway.
I walked down it, not expecting anything unusual, when suddenly, the lights flickered. Since me and James were playing split-screen, he saw my flicker, and I saw the flicker in his elevator.
"Hey, Kira, did the lights flicker in the campaign, in either version of the building?" James asked.
"I have no bloody clue, James," I said, slipping into an English accent. "Shows what I know."
Jim's elevator arrived, and I looked around the stairwell, looking for guns or ammo. You know, what anyone might do.
''*Clang, Clang, Clang.* ''
Something was banging around on the other side of this damaged wall, and I stepped back, thinking that maybe another player was in there, somehow, breaking things, or trying to get out.
I sensed something wasn't right, which was common, when we were playing multiplayer. I usually can detect the enemy moving about, even without my radar.
I looked at my radar, and saw the red "Enemy Motion" ping on it. And something else.
The timer, which I just realized was there, was broken. it was at "-02:59," which was Spartan Jorge's tag, as far as I could remember.
"Big red ping, and Jorge's number on the timer," I said. "I wonder what will happen next, maybe zombie Jorge?"
"Yeah, funny, Kira," James said.
Out Of Reach
...
Well, it wasn't zombie Jorge.
It was one of the enemies from the campaign, a "hunter."
It broke through the already damaged wall of the stairwell, and came at me. Being as low on ammo as I was, I booked it down the stairs, heading toward where Jim's elevator had let him off.
"What the hell is with this!?" I shout, a bit too loudly. "A hunter in infection?"
We had seen a lot of glitches, but never campaign enemies in the multiplayer.
I got to the bottom of the stairwell quickly, and ran out of the open door, to where James was waiting, telling me to "Hurry, hurry, run the hell out!"
The hunter was still chasing me, and was right behind me, moving oddly fast for a hunter, which are normally slower than a tank.
Again, almost out of ammo, we had to run from it, which meant the front exit of the building, where there's plenty of space to evade it. Following this plan, we run out there, and are met with what looks like a small army of other players, all with green armor, like the color some real armies use.
"Hey, Jim," I say to James with a grin, "Let's have ''them'' deal with the hunter!"
We ran towards them, and, sure enough, they raise their weapons and completely waste the hunter. We watched it get riddled with bullets, and then turned back to the "soldiers."
They fired on us, killing us in mere seconds, and the match ended.
"Kira?"
"Yes, James?"
"What the hell just happened in that match?"
"No idea, James."
The next day, my copy of the game was missing, as was his. We eventually bought new copies, and never saw anything like that again.
Well, not in the game, anyways.
''Written by TheLonesomeKira''